


Steady

by elzebrook



Series: Steve Rogers likes libraries [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Returns, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Long, M/M, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, OT3, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer as heck, Romance, Slow Burn, Threesome - F/M/M, Trauma Recovery, so long, why do i keep accidentally writing novels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-29 08:14:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 34,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15068972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elzebrook/pseuds/elzebrook
Summary: Hey remember five years ago, when I said "everyone is always like 'Oh, Cap, you should start to move on, it’s ok to move on, Bucky would want you to live your life' and the whole time we know that Bucky is actually out there brainwashed and bitter and hurting and I JUST HAVE A LOT OF WINTER SOLDIER ARC FEELINGS OK?!" and then everyone told me I should write a Bucky sequel? Remember that??!?!GUESS WHAT.A.K.A., three idiots try to navigate trauma recovery and accidentally fall in love with a side of cuddling and pining and terrible protein shakes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HI FRIENDS, welcome to Elze Writes Another Accidental Novel! 
> 
> THIS FIC WILL BE QUEER AS HECK! Because I am queer as heck and also completely incapable of writing MCU Steve and Bucky as anything other than Sad Pining Soft Boys.
> 
> If you are invested in Steve and Sophie having a wonderful but heterosexual happily ever after, this is not the fic for you. If you want a lot of "Three idiots try to navigate trauma recovery and accidentally fall in love with a side of cuddling and pining and terrible protein shakes," boy howdy, you are in luck. 
> 
> This is a direct sequel, picking up like...a year(?) after Touch ends. Linear time is not a thing I comprehend, so it's squishy.
> 
> This fic's title is taken from [Steady by The Staves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im__swvPfzM). Fair warning, the music video is disturbing as hell if you're triggered by depictions of suicide/depression. But if you're triggered by those subjects, you might not want to keep reading this fic? Up to you. Here we go!

Steve felt himself waking up, drifting through that warm pink state between sleep and consciousness. He rolled over and reached out, smiling as his fingers encountered warmth and silky hair. His girl.

His girl wriggled closer and licked him across the face.

“Augh, Honey, why,” he grumbled. She thumped her tail, unrepentant. A soft laugh made him turn over.

“She wouldn’t do that if you didn’t let her on the bed,” said Sophie.

“If I don’t let her on the bed, I wake up in the middle of the night because she’s just standing there, staring at me.”

Steve stretched and Honey took the opportunity roll over and shove her head under his hand. He pet her while he examined his wife.

She was dressed in one of her understated and egregiously expensive suits, but her hair was in a soft braid and her blouse had a print of monkeys holding umbrellas.

 _Where does she even find these things?_ he wondered.

A suit, so not a normal day at the library. But the braid and the novelty blouse meant she wasn’t dealing with The Family Business, as she termed anything to do with Stark Industries or superheroing.

“Do we have a charity thing today?” he said, finally. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You didn’t get in until four,” she said. “And no. I have a library conference all weekend, remember?”

“Ah, shit, is it Saturday? The time change always throws me.”

He had spent the last week bouncing around Europe, chasing whispers and finding nothing. He sat up, earning a grumble from Honey. Sophie came to stand in front of him, smoothing his hair back. He looped his arms around her waist.

“Welcome home,” she said. “Find anything?”

“Nothing worth mentioning, no. What time is it?”

“A little after eight. My panel’s not ‘til 10, but there’s a breakfast thing and I oughta do some schmoozing.”

“Mmm,” said Steve, pulling her closer. “D’you need me?”

He felt her laugh ruffle his hair.

“That’ll give the cardiganed masses a thrill. They wouldn’t listen to a thing I said, they’d be too busy swooning over you. I don’t want you to get swarmed by middle aged women in glasses chains and sensible shoes. Anyway,” she continued, “I’m taking Leif.”

Leif, Sophie’s dog, sat by the door, looking patient, alert, and long suffering all at once.

Steve pulled back to give her A Look. She rolled her eyes.

“And Kevin, and Mari. I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to keep me safe in the dangerous waters of coffee klatches and panels on mental health services in public libraries.”

She bent down to kiss him, then pulled back to brush the worries from his forehead. He could see their mirror image in her face.

“Go back to sleep, love,” she said. “You can tell me everything later.”

He shrugged, the frustration that had ebbed in the night rising again.

“Nothing to tell.”

Sophie gave him A Look of her own, and he grinned. Her attempt at sternness was derailed by the umbrella monkeys.

“And I can think of better things to do when you get back,” he said, pulling her down for another kiss. She swatted at him.

“You, sleep. You,” she said, looking at Honey, “make sure he sleeps.” She disentangled herself from him.

“C’mon Leif, time to go to work.”

Steve listened to her footsteps across the apartment until the door shut gently behind her and her canine shadow. He turned to look at his own.

“What does she expect you to do, sit on me until I pass out?”

Honey, ever the opportunist, had rolled over again, paws splayed in the air and snoring. She looked obnoxiously comfortable.

“I guess another twenty minutes couldn’t hurt.”

* * *

“You Captain America’s wife?”

Sophie sat at a table, attempting to decipher the conference schedule. She’d sent Kevin and Mari on a food run, trusting that Leif would alert her to anything she needed to worry about. He was at her feet, ears perked but relaxed.

“Yep,” she said, unwilling to take her eyes off the schedule in case it rearranged itself while she wasn’t looking.

“What’s he like?”

It was about the four hundredth time someone had asked her that question. Most of the askers had been either earnest and wide-eyed or full of fluttery giggling, not asking her in a rough voice with a hint of Brooklyn. But they had all made her feel old, and she was tired and out of patience.

“He snores.”

The man in front of her made a soft sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh.

“He always did.”

It took a moment for the words to register past the color coded disaster in front of her. Sophie’s eyes flicked up to look at him, confusion warring with suspicion.

Nondescript clothing, baseball cap half hiding an unshaven face framed by longish brown hair. The shadows under his eyes and cheekbones told of being unslept and underfed, the tension in his jaw and the ashen pale of his skin spoke of pain. She focused in on his face to meet eyes half a shade lighter than Steve’s and a wry half smile and she _knew_.

“Shit.”

His smile quirked deeper.

“Tell him I said goodbye, will ya?” asked Bucky, just before he swayed and started to fall.


	2. Chapter 2

James knew it was a bad idea to come here, but when had that ever stopped him. His heart stutters, stops, stutters again. 

_ Require 5ccs of blue to maintain stability, _ says the ghost in his head.

_ You and I both know there isn't any left, _ he tells it.

“Shit,” says Sophie again, leaping out of her chair. “Shit shit shit shit shit.”

She reaches him as he stumbles, reaching around his waist to brace him. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. 

“We’re just...we’re just gonna go find somewhere quiet. Please don’t pass out yet, I really don’t want the attention.”

Sophie maneuvers them to a corner and slides down the wall to sit on the floor. Her dog gives them an assessing look before turning around and assuming a guarding position. 

“What is it?” Sophie asks. Her face is sliding in and out of focus. James knows his breathing is shallow, and his skin even paler than before, but the pain is a body thing and he’s good at ignoring those.

“‘M having a heart attack, pretty sure,” he says. He sounds nonchalant about it and feels obscurely proud.

“ _ What _ .” says Sophie.

“Sorry. Thought I’d have a few more hours.”

“What the fucking shit, Barnes,” says Steve’s wife. He doesn’t answer. Trust Steve to marry a girl who swears like a sailor. She reaches up and presses her earring.

“We have a situation. Mari, get the car please. Kevin, I need you here, I’m in a corner behind the table I was at. No, I’m fine, it’s not me. I don’t know, we never came up with a code for ‘I’ve found my husband’s dead best friend.’ Yes, I am serious. Now please.”

A bossy girl who swears like a sailor. James likes her immediately. She drops her hand and looks at him. 

“Don’t die.”

“No promises,” he answers. It’s too late anyway. He feels bad about his miscalculation. If everything had gone the way it should, he’d be dying in nice and quiet in the tunnels right now, not practically in the lap of a stranger.

“Ahahaha,” says Sophie, dropping her head to her knees. “I can’t deal with this. Leif!”

The dog turns around to look. 

“Purse.”

Leif bounds off and returns with the purse, dropping it on Sophie’s lap. 

“Good boy,” she said. She upends the bag on the floor and paws through the contents.

“You ok?” James manages.

“Ha. No. I am having a panic attack. But I will take these nice pink pills and then I won’t be having a panic attack, and I will deal with this until I can make someone else deal with this. Just...concentrate on not dying please.”

Hands shaking, she manages to get a small bottle open and shakes out a few pills, swallowing them down dry. A black man in a suit who might as well have BODYGUARD tattooed on his forehead approaches. He exchanges a look with the Leif before relieving him of the guard position. The dog comes over and lays down half in Sophie’s lap. James leans his head back against the wall, and closes his eyes. The pain comes in waves and he focuses on ignoring it.

_ Require the blue. Abort mission. Return to base. Abort mission, _ says the ghost. It sounds like a computer alarm from a bad sci-fi show.

_ Oh my god, shut up, _ he thinks at it.

_ Return to base. _

_ I would literally rather die. Which I am doing. So there. _

The ghost stops its alarm loop.

_ This is an ineffective use of resources _ , it says. It sounds judgemental. James ignores it.

“Bucky?” comes Sophie’s voice again. She sounds far away. “I don’t need you to talk, but can you nod if you hear me?”

He nods.

“Our ride’s here. Kevin’s going to help you to the car and then we’re going to go somewhere safe. Ok?”

He manages to open his eyes to see Sophie and the suited man. He nods again.

The trip through the convention center is the stuff of stumbling painful nightmares, but he feels almost cheerful. After all, he’ll be dead in an hour or so, so what does it matter. He’s half carried, half slid into the back seat of a nondescript sedan. The dog had taken the middle seat. The bodyguard is up front and a small woman with curly hair is driving. Sophie is in the other window seat, apparently talking into her necklace. James wonders if every piece of jewelry was a walkie talkie these days.

“Steve?” she was saying. “You might want to sit down.”

_ ABORT _ yells the ghost. 

_ Go to hell _ , thinks James, and finally passes out.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

“What’s wrong with him?” Steve asked.

“What isn’t wrong with him?” muttered the doctor, injecting a syringe into Bucky’s IV. Bruce made a pacifying gesture.

It had been some hours since Bucky had been found. Steve had convinced Sophie to go upstairs because she looked on the verge of having her own breakdown, but he hadn’t left the room. First it was the heart attack, and then another heart attack. Things seemed to settle for a while, and then Bucky started having a seizure.

Watching that happen and knowing there was nothing he could do ranked as one of the top five worst moments of Steve’s life.

Then there were mutterings about organ failure and ominous beeping from machines. Steve sat across the room, noticed in a vague way that the chairs were more comfortable than the time he did this for Sophia, and fisted his hands so hard he heard his bones creak. Eventually one of the nurses took pity on him and paged Bruce to act as a translator.

“His heart is damaged,” Bruce said. “He seems to have pneumonia, and his liver and kidneys are shutting down. It’s likely he’s also suffering from withdrawal from whatever drugs they were keeping him on. And being put in and taken out of cryogenic stasis for seventy years can’t have been good for him.”

On the bed, Bucky tensed and started his second seizure of the night. The doctor swore and snapped something to a nurse, who ran off. Steve started up from his chair.

“And then there’s that,” said Bruce.

“I’m putting him in a coma,” said the doctor. “He’s going to hurt himself more if this keeps happening.”

She threw a questioning look over her shoulder at Steve, who looked at Bruce.

“It’s the best option we have,” he said. “It’s unlikely he’ll regain consciousness anytime soon anyway.”

Steve nodded.

Whatever the doctor did at least seemed to make Bucky quiet, his face blank under his oxygen mask. Bruce went to talk to her, tapping through test results on a tablet. When the ominous beepings leveled out, she came over.

“Hi,” she said, sticking out a hand. “I’m Divya Chu.”

Steve unclenched his fist and took it.

“Steve Rogers.”

“I assume you’re responsible for him?” She waved a hand in the direction of Bucky.

“Not for the state he’s in, but yes. I guess.”

“Great,” she said. “Who the hell is he?”

Steve blinked.

“He’s got to have some kind of healing factor, or he’d be dead. He’s built like an angry tank, and he has a goddamn metal arm. Is he a mutant? Because that’ll change my treatment strategy. Or a supervillain? If he’s a supervillain I have to tell security, it’s in my contract.”

“He’s James Barnes,” said Steve. A wealth of emotion in those words. James Barnes, present tense. James Barnes, across the room. James Barnes, alive and safe, if only just.

Dr. Chu whistled.

“No shit.”

She turned her attention back to Bruce.

“I need coffee. Holler if anything changes.”

Steve stared at Bruce in mute appeal after the door swung shut behind her. One corner of Bruce’s mouth tilted up.

“Her people skills could use some work,” he admitted. “But she’s the best there is. She’s been working with mutants and other metas for years. And she published a few papers on the bio-ethics of intentional human enhancement that completely shredded Tony’s arguments, so he poached her from Stanford. Barnes couldn’t be in better hands.”

Steve rocked on his heels and asked the question he hadn’t dared to think yet.

“Is he--will he--”

“I don’t know,” said Bruce. “But if he’s anything like you, he’ll pull through.”

 _He’s not like me_ , Steve thought. _He’s better._

He sat down again, and waited.

* * *

 

He woke to a soft touch on his shoulder and the smell of coffee.

“You’re an angel. Marry me.”

His wife chuckled and handed him a cup.

“Name the day.”

She sobered, looking at the form on the bed.

“Divya says his heart has stabilized, but the seizures haven’t stopped, and his lungs and kidneys are still, and I quote, ‘full of shit.’ She’s grabbing a few hours of sleep while she can,” she said.

Steve closed his eyes and let the coffee scour the fuzz off his tongue.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said. He was drowning under the weight of it.

Sophie let her arm fall around his shoulders and he leaned against her.

“Me neither,” she said. “But I think it starts with not killing yourself. You’re no good to him dead. Or me, either.”

“I can’t--” he started.

“Bull,” she said. “Go eat something and walk your dog. I’ll stay here and let you know if anything changes.”

He looked up at her. “You sure?”

She had very few regular triggers anymore, but hospitals were one of them. She shrugged.

“Everyone’s played the waiting game for me enough times, it’s probably my turn. And I have a book.”

He hauled himself out of the chair.

“If you’re sure--”

“Yes,” she said.

“Let me know if--”

“ _Yes_ ,” she said.

“Or--”

“If you say one more word not related to you getting food, I will have Hulk drag you bodily out of here. And that would piss off Divya. Do you want to piss off Divya?”

He smiled, unwilling but unable not to, and enfolded her in his arms.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now go away.”

He went.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Captain America Day! Have a chapter!

* * *

Steve walked his dog to a diner nearby, and sat outside so Honey could watch the people and the pigeons. He ordered an omelet and thought about the logistics of having Bucky declared officially alive and officially not an enemy of the state. He thought about what it would be like to show Bucky the future, to watch animated films and reality dance competitions, to see their Smithsonian exhibit, to give him Ray Bradbury and smartphones and froyo.

He didn't think about losing him, because losing Bucky again would kill him.

He started home.

His phone rang and he snatched it up without looking at the screen.

“Is he ok?”

“If you are asking about Sergeant Barnes, I believe his state is unchanged, Captain,” said a crisp British voice.

“Sorry, Jarvis,” said Steve, on a relieved exhale.

“Your anxiety is understandable. However, I believe you may have a more pressing problem. As much as I do not want to add to your worries..."

Steve felt a headache building. He didn’t get headaches, but that didn’t seem to stop this one.

“What is it?”

“Mr. Stark has been apprised of the current situation and is on his way from Miami. He has requested a ‘team meeting.’”

Steve heard the euphemistic quotes slot into place. Of everyone’s reactions, Tony’s was the one he had been dreading the most. No one agreed on the subject of Bucky, but almost everyone had adopted a “wait and see” position. True to form, though, Tony was still volatile and Steve implacable. He sighed.

“Thanks for the heads up.”

“You’re welcome,” said Jarvis. “Good luck.”

The AI disconnected and Steve broke into a run. He made it back to his apartment ten minutes before an irate Tony Stark burst through his door, followed by everyone else.

The “team meeting” devolved into an argument within twenty minutes and it was still going on. Both Honey and Bruce slipped out with the rising of tempers, and Steve felt abandoned.

“He can’t stay here,” said Clint, for the fifth time. “Not long term. It’s too dangerous.”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose.

“He’s not staying here at all!” said Tony. His voice was pitched high and angry. Pepper watched him as he paced, anxiety on her features.

“Tony, I understand your concerns, but I’m just asking for some time--” Steve started.

“Time? You can have all the time you want when he’s frozen!”

Steve’s self-control snapped.

“I will never let--”

“That’s not the solution to--” began Natasha at the same time

“Tony, that’s unfair--” started Pepper.

“Unfair?!” yelled Tony. “ _He killed my mother!_ ”

“And how many mothers have you killed, Anthony?” came a voice from the door, a whipcrack over the fighting.

They all turned. Sophie stood gripping her arms as if holding herself together. She looked a bit like Steve imagined an avenging angel, pale and exhausted and incandescent with rage. 

“That is not the same--”

“You’re right, it’s not. You did it in what was technically your right mind, which makes it infinitely worse.”

Pepper opened her mouth to protest, but Sophie got there first.

“And don’t you dare act all reasonable at me about this, Virginia. You worked for Tony for years when he dealt out mass murder, you have no right to claim any moral high ground.”

“It’s not what Barnes has done, it’s what he’s capable of doing,” said Natasha, measured and objective. “I know to you he is Steve’s friend and a broken man in need of help, but I know what he’s capable of. What he was made into. He’s dangerous.”

“Really? And what are you? He’s hardly the only manufactured weapon in this building. Tony used to sit around with enough power in his chest to level half the city, Bruce is a heartbeat away from turning into a monster, Steve let mad scientists play around with his genetics for funsies, I can kill someone in less time than it takes them to blink and you, Nat, are the only person in this room capable of taking down all of us. Where do you think it would lead if we started locking people up because of what they might do? With your abilities, and your history?”

Natasha sat back, her face the carefully blank mask she cultivated for when she was having an emotion.

“It’s not that we want to lock him up, Soph, it’s just that there are better places than--” started Clint.

“And where would those be? The shattered remnants of an organization that may still be run by Neo-Nazis? Because that worked out so well for him before. The military? Let’s ask Bruce how he thinks that will go. A fucking clinic in fucking Switzerland? Do you honestly think a building designed to contain the Hulk on bad day can’t make a safe place for one halfway dead halfway super soldier? And how do you think it would go if we take him away from the one person in the world he trusts?”

Sophie stared around the room.

“You are, all of you, complicit in terrible things, and now you think because you’re heroes you get to decide who gets second chances? Whose stories get to be heard? You do not.

Whatever James did, he sure as hell didn’t do it willingly, or he would not be in the state he is. He has been on the loose for at least six months, and he hasn’t done anything you wouldn’t do. He only came to me when he was dying, and he only came to me to say goodbye. He is staying until he is well enough to make his own decisions. Anyone who wants to argue with me can go fuck themselves.”

Almost everyone opened their mouths, to protest or argue or possibly apologize. Sophie raised a hand.

“Save it. I am going to bed. If you wish to continue bitching about the deathly ill, tortured and traumatized kidnap victim in our medical center, have the decency to fuck off and do it somewhere other than _my_ apartment.”

She stalked past them to the bedroom and closed the door with a click that was only loud because it fell into a ringing silence.

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” said Steve, setting a mug down on the corner of Sophie’s vanity. “I shouldn’t have let them have that conversation here.”

They'd all left shortly after her tirade. He’d made her some tea and gave her a moment to collect herself.

She met his eyes in the mirror and a gave a wry smile.

“Not your fault. I know what they’re like.”

“Still,” Steve answered. “Home is supposed to be safe.”

Not somewhere where your family debates the humanity of someone who, but for the grace of God, could have been you. Sometimes he wondered if they remembered what she had survived, or if they had all buried it too deep.

He watched as her fingers, ice white and trembling, picked at her braid. He leaned over and picked up her hairbrush from the vanity.

“Let me.”

She bent her head and he unraveled her hair, snarled from where she pushed it back over and over. Her hands danced along the vanity, fiddling with hair ties and bobby pins.

“Drink your tea,” he said, as much to give her something to do with her hands as to spare him watching her nervous fidgeting. She wrapped her fingers around the mug. Color seeped back into them as he smoothed out recalcitrant knots and braided her hair loosely for the night.

“Thank you,” she said, when he tied off the end and rested his hands on her shoulders.

“You were magnificent,” he said in return. “All of today, but especially...I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone shut them up so efficiently.”

Her smile returned, but quirked and shaded with regret. Leif came up and rested his head in her lap. She tugged on his ears.

“I just know their tender places.”

“You did the right thing,” he said, because he knew she was doubting that now, faced with wreaking emotional carnage on her friends. “We did the right thing.”

“I know,” she sighed. “It just sucks. Anyway. I came up to tell you that his seizures have stopped, and he’s resting. Or whatever you do in a coma. Oh, and we found...”

She turned, patting her pockets. Leif trotted out to the living room and returned holding a notebook.

“That,” finished Sophie. Steve took it while she told Leif he was the best of dogs.

“It was in his pocket,” said Sophie. “It’s in code.”

Steve turned it over, wiping drool off the black leather cover. He flipped it open. It was in code, but a code he knew like he still knew the sound of Bucky’s footsteps on the stairs to their fifth floor walk up.

“Some kind of cascading cypher, I think,” Sophie was saying. His eyes skimmed the page, counting lines. Fifth from the bottom, and then--

“But you already knew that.”

He looked up to meet an amused expression.

“Sorry,” he said. “And yeah, I do. We used this. A long time ago.”

“I see the dogs and I will have the bed to ourselves tonight,” said Sophie. Steve forced himself to close the book, and slipped it in his pocket.

“No. It can wait. It’s waited this long.”

He reached out and pulled her to her feet. He had not been the best husband, these past few months. He’d been gone, mentally even when he was there physically, and she’d had to bear the brunt of it. But now...

“Buck’s downstairs and as safe as he can be, and you’re right here.”

He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, her lips, and thanked again whatever stars led him to her. She leaned against him.

“Today was hard,” she said into his chest. He laughed, softly. His fingers skimmed up her back, cupped her neck. She looked up at him.

“Let me make it better,” he murmured. She closed her eyes and nodded, once. He kissed her again, slow, gentle, full of promise. She twined her arms around his neck and he carried to her to bed.

* * *

 

Steve woke early, too geared up to sleep for long. He slid out of bed. Leif crawled up to replace him immediately. Sophie flung an arm over the dog, burrowing her face into his fur.

Steve retrieved the notebook and some fresh clothes, and went to the living room. He flicked on a lamp, shoved Honey over on the couch, and sat down to work.

_...fifth line up from the bottom, and..._

Light crept through the windows as Steve deciphered the words of the man who had once been the center of his world. Sophie found him, later, pen and paper set aside, staring at a map on his phone.

“Find something?”

He turned.

“Maybe.”

“Don’t go alone,” she said, her face serious and maybe a little sad. He went to her, taking her hand and brushing a kiss over it. He had learned the futility of arguing.

“I won’t,” he said. “Try and get some more sleep.”

She nodded, and he left. She picked the papers up from the couch to lie down, pillowing her head on Honey. Leif curled up at her feet. One side of the paper was an address in the Upper East Side. She flipped it over. Steve’s handwriting, but not Steve’s words.

_Stevie_

_If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead. Sorry about that. I would have come to you, but then I never would have left, and there were things needed doing. I left some things for you with my landlady. She’s a snappy piece of work, you’ll like her._

_Saw you finally got yourself a girl. Wish I could have met her, then we could commiserate._

_Don’t feel too badly about me. I was living on borrowed time anyway. I’d tell you to stay out of trouble, but we both know it’d be wasted. Stay safe, punk._

_B_


	5. Chapter 5

The address Bucky left him belonged to a well kept brownstone on a street of other well kept brownstones. Steve ended up taking Natasha, because she was both awake and didn't currently hate him. She made him sit at a Starbucks for a few hours because “We are not knocking on anyone’s door at this ungodly hour, do you want to get shot?”

She waited until nine, scoping out the neighborhood from behind her expensive sunglasses and judging passerbys’ inbred lap dogs. 

Finally they followed a flower delivery into the building, and found the right door. Steve’s knock was followed by an explosion of baritone barking and a voice saying “Timmy, settle. Timmy, back! Go lie down, you over-enthusiastic doorbell.”

The door opened.

“Ah, little spider. Have you come to kill me?”

Natasha took in the woman before her. In her seventies, but wearing it well. Twinset and pearls. Plain wedding band. The self possession of a queen and eyes that Natasha was pretty sure saw into her soul. 

“...No?” she said. The feeling of being flayed open at a glance unsettled her. 

“I wouldn’t let her,” said Steve. Nat shot him a look indicating what she thought of his ability to stop her from doing anything. The woman peered up at Steve before breaking into a smile. Behind her, a Golden Retriever waved its tail in the vague but friendly way of Golden Retrievers everywhere.

“Oh, you must be James’s Steve,” said the woman. “He told me you’d come by if he died. But you look entirely too worried for him to be dead. Has he killed someone?”

Steve looked at Natasha. Natasha looked at Steve. 

“Ma’am,” said Steve at last. “It might be best if we come in.”

 

* * *

They were installed on an overstuffed couch in a large, light filled room. Floral arrangements rested on tables, soft pillows on chairs. Everything spoke of comfortable wealth, tastefully applied. Natasha was ninety percent sure someone was about to try and kill her. The dog went to sleep on Steve’s feet.

The woman returned with a tea tray. Natasha and Steve watched with increasing bewilderment as she made one cup with milk and sugar, which she placed in front of Steve, and one cup with two teaspoons of New York’s best strawberry jam. Natasha knew that because she bought it for her own tea. Her sense of the uncanny increased as the woman placed that cup in front of her.

The woman settled back into her chair with her own tea--milk, no sugar--and looked at them expectantly. 

“Well? Has he killed someone?”

“Not...lately?” Steve managed. 

“He’s in the hospital,” said Natasha. The woman clucked and shook her head.

“I knew he was going to get into trouble.”

“He left me note?” said Steve. He wasn’t sure why everything he said was coming out as a question, but she reminded him of his fifth grade teacher and Sister Mary Teresa had terrified him. He wrested his authority back from the memory of nuns with rulers. 

“He said he left some things with his landlady and gave this address, so we’re following up.” He turned on his best earnest expression. “I’m very sorry, but he didn’t even leave a name, Mrs...”

She examined him a touch longer than comfortable.

“Salzmann. But please, call me Louisa. James really didn’t tell you anything?”

“He’s been unconscious,” said Natasha. “So, no.”

The woman set her cup aside. 

“That boy. He never learns. I suppose this will be easiest if I start from the beginning.”

She settled into her chair, a grandmother about to tell a story. 

“In the years after World War II, Russia started sending spies to the United States,” she began. Steve blinked and readjusted his expectations.

“The FBI currently calls them Illegals. Russians sent to live in deep cover and integrate as much as possible with Americans, often in pairs to better pose as married couples. Sometimes these couples have children--what could be more normal than a young couple with children? Especially in the suburbs of the 1950s. There was nothing more innocuous. 

My parents were two such agents. Functionally and totally American except for the occasional information sent abroad, the occasional task carried out. I believe the idea from Russia was the children--American citizens by birth--could be raised as agents, and placed in even more strategic positions than their parents. Generations of sleeper cells, waiting to be called upon.”

Louisa shook her head. 

“Shows what Russia knew. As if children of 1960s America could be convinced wholesale to serve overseas authoritarian overlords. It backfired, for the most part. Quietly, sometimes, and other times...spectacularly. I count myself among the latter.

At sixteen, I was unsure of my parents’ masters. At eighteen, I knew I wanted out, but could not see a way. I wanted a college education, which was encouraged, because an education opens many doors. The spymasters’ mistake was letting attend a college of my own choosing. I started classes at UC Berkeley the fall of 1964.”

Natasha made the strangled noise of someone trying to swallow their laughter. Louisa smiled, her eyes crinkling. 

“Oh yes. I had such a time, those years. I believe I learned more waving a placard and working with the student organizations than I ever learned in a classroom. I joined the Free Speech Movement. Through them, I met my husband. He was the son of a Holocaust survivor and an escapee from Stalin’s Russia. The more I learned from them, the more I despised my parents puppet masters, and the more I began to see the parallels between the people in power everywhere. 

Ben--my husband--and I began assisting with an underground railroad of sorts. We helped people out of dangerous situations--mutants, Jews, refugees from both the USSR and Mao’s Cultural Revolution. It was small ways--a bed for a night or two, a meal, some clothing. But these people...sometimes they wanted to talk. And I am a good audience. People have always talked to me. And I began...collecting.

“Stories. Information. Files. Photographs. Whatever came my way. And there was much that came my way. Eventually my parents died, and I got to their papers before anyone else did. Information attracts other information, and as I gathered, I gained something of a reputation in some circles. If I was lawful, I would have given it to the United States government, but I am an anti-authoritarian to my bones. I have kept it all, like a chicken on her eggs. I know things that would make your Nicholas Fury turn green. I hold secrets spanning an entire century.”

Steve wondered what this had to do with Bucky. Louisa fixed him with a gimlet eye as though sensing his inattention.

“I only tell you all this so that when I say around year ago a man showed up at my doorstep with a pocket full of usb drives and a passphrase not used since the 1990s, you will understand why I let him stay.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we get to Bucky. Finally.

* * *

 

The asset opens his eyes. It is quiet. There is usually noise, when he wakes. There is an opening, words, a sense of urgency. There is protocol.

It is quiet. This is unusual. The asset does not trust unusual things. He waits.

Waiting fails to make the situation more usual. There is nothing but the sound of his own breathing. The asset taps on the glass.

.-. . .- -.. -.-- / - --- / -.-. --- -- .--. .-.. -.--

No response. He taps again, louder. Still, no one comes. He begins to knock, then to pound, then to slam his fist into the cover until it cracks, splinters, and he pushes his way out.

He stands, unclothed, in the darkness, and still, no one comes.

His body begins to make demands. Shelter, water, warmth, food. Survival is the first priority, in the absence of others.

Shelter: He is inside. He knows this from the stillness of the air, the scent of dust and concrete, the lack of light. He finds a switch on the wall. It does not work, but there is a flashlight next to it.

Water. He enters the next room. There is a sink, a toilet, a hose on the wall. He eyes it and tries the tap instead. It works. The water spews out, cold and gritty, but drinkable.

Warmth. He goes back, finds the uniform, puts it on. Laces the boots. Clothed, the ambient temperature is acceptable.

Food. They gave him food. He does not know where it is kept. He exits the base room, past the water, and starts down a hallway. Each door reveals nothing useful. One is full of electronics. Another of beds. At the far end of a room of tables and chairs is another room. He realizes it is a kitchen. He opens the cupboards, finding a few things he recognizes. He lets the faucet run until it is clear, fills up a few bottles.

He returns to the base room. He eats. Attends to other bodily demands. He waits.

Still, no one comes.

He has no concept of how many hours pass, with no daylight to judge by, and no one who tells him. He locates his weapons, checks their condition. He eats to maintain his condition--he is, after all, another weapon. He circuits the building. There is no one in it. He attempts to initiate contact with his handlers, but every code he tries on the battery powered radio elicits no response.

Eventually, his body demands another thing. Sleep.

He does not sleep often. He maintains performance for up to 72 hours. Therefore, it has been longer than 72 hours.

He goes to the room with the beds.

He does not sleep often. He sleeps for no more than three hours when he does. He can function on less.

He sits on the bed.

He does not sleep often, but sleep is necessary to maintain condition beyond 72 hours. Survival is the first priority, in the absence of others.

He lies down.

He sleeps.

 

* * *

 

When the soldier wakes up, he realizes three things.

It’s pitch black and he can’t see a goddamn thing.

Body armor is really uncomfortable to sleep in.

He has to piss like a racehorse.

He feels around for the flashlight and goes to the bathroom. The flashlight throws shadows under his eyes and cheekbones, making him look old and eerie in the mirror.

When did his hair get so long?

He takes off the body armor. He’s alone in the building. He knows this. There’s no need for body armor.

He wants lights. There has to be backup power somewhere. He wanders around until he finds a circuit breaker, and flips switches and toggles things. Eventually he punches through a few walls to rewire some connections. At last, when he flips a switch again, there is light.

The building he’s in is a nondescript concrete block, functional and ugly and cold. He walks around, turning on all the lights. He comes to the room he woke up in, the pod shattered in pieces. There is other furniture. Cupboards, desks. A chair.

He stares at the chair.

_Who are you?_

_Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038, 107th infantry._

_Pain. Screaming, blinding pain._

_Who are you?_

_Sergeant James--_

He turns off the light and shuts the door.

He heads to the kitchen. He's hungry again, and he would murder someone for a cup of coffee.

The only coffee is instant, but there's sugar, so that's alright. All the food is packaged or canned. Wherever he is, it hasn't been used often or lately. He makes rice and beans, and finds some more of that horrible slurry they usually feed him. He chugs a bottle, since he knows he needs the vitamins. It tastes just as terrible as he remembers.

He returns to the room he slept in. He knows he should try to contact his handlers again. He finds the radio and stares at it for a long, long moment before he raises his left fist and brings it down, hard.

He leaves the pieces scattered and goes back to bed.

 

* * *

 

He sleeps, waking only to eat and deal with the other less pleasant aspects of having a body. Eventually he becomes sick of his own stink and braves the shower. The water warms, surprising him. He spends hours under the spray, drops drumming on his skin. It’s the first pleasant sensation he remembers since...

The water cools and he turns it off. He finds clothing in the bedroom, softer things than his uniform, and he puts them on. He kicks the uniform under the bed.

Days pass, and still, no one comes.

He sleeps, but sleep begins to bring dreams. Dreams of fire, screaming, gunshots, tangled with ice and pain. He begins looking for reasons to stay awake.

There is a room with training equipment and he uses it to bring his mind back to itself after the nightmares. He circuits the building until he knows it blind, at a walk, then at a run. He builds himself an obstacle course out of furniture and runs that until he knows it blind as well. He runs out of ways to convince himself rice and beans are interesting. He finds some MREs, but saves them, just in case.

In case of what, he doesn’t know.

He still has no idea where he is. Or when he is. The expiration dates on the beans were so ludicrous he had to sit down with his head between his knees, but he has no idea what bearing those dates have on the here and now.

He knows there’s a room with a computer--a room full of computers--but he’s a coward. He also knows he can’t stay here forever. Eventually he’ll run out of canned beans.

The need to know finally wins out over the cowardice, and he switches a machine on. He doesn’t know how he knows how to work one, but he does. He doesn’t want to think about it too hard. The computer boots up. He braces himself, and looks at the date.

It’s still ludicrous. He goes and runs his obstacle course a few times to prevent the hysterical laughter he feels building inside him.

The computer says the same date when he gets back, but he forces himself to move on.

He opens a browser and looks up his location.

He’d planned to go traveling after the war, but this is not what he’d meant. He clicks around on a map, looking for the nearest town. It has 231 people and a bus that comes on Thursdays. He can work with that. He’s had to work with worse.

The two most pressing questions answered, he hovers over the search bar. Cowardice wars with need again, and need wins.

S T E...

And there he is, in living color. Bucky breathes out, a sigh of relief he didn’t even know he could feel. The specter of a world without Steve floats away, replaced by _how on earth_ \--

He skims articles, websites. Of course the idiot would fly a plane into an iceberg, and of course he would survive. Only Steve. He rolls his eyes.

He clicks and reads, losing track of time. He finds pictures of Steve with others, scientists, doctors, soldiers. Howard Stark’s son, older now than Howard was then. A girl in a white dress.

With a lurch, he realizes that one’s a wedding picture. He looks at it closer. She’s beautiful, tall and blonde with the kind of lush curves he’d always admired. Steve looks at her like she hung the moon.

Happiness and pride rise with something uncomfortable and unnamed in his throat, and James clicks away.

He ends up, at last, on a museum website, staring at his own face. His left hand curls into a fist.

James switches the machine off and goes to bed.

 

* * *

 

He’s back the next day, the need to know cracked open and yawning like a pit. He searches and reads and learns.

Steve’s team is called the Avengers. World War II only lead to more wars. Aliens are real, and can apparently control the weather. Mutants live openly, but people still hate them. Stark invented infinite power but never figured out that flying car. Steve’s wife is named Sophia. Nazis are making a comeback.

“Did they ever leave?” James mutters, and jumps at the sound of his own voice. He realizes he hasn’t heard a voice since he got out of the pod, not even his own. He clicks around some more.

The Avengers are fighting HYDRA, rooting out cells and cleaning them up. No wonder he couldn’t raise anyone on the radio when he woke up, the first time. Everything must be dark. And this base is so remote, it’s not surprising that no one came to check after the power outage. Resources must be stretched thin.

He leaves the stories about HYDRA and watches a few videos of Steve, just to hear some noise. Steve makes stirring speeches about justice and doing what’s right. James feels almost heartened to know that’s still the same. He sleeps again, and dreams of blood and snow.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes, he knows something wrong. His heart is kicking like drugged mule, erratic and feeble and angry. He stumbles to the room with the chair. He knows what he’s looking for, but he doesn't know how he knows, and that upsets him maybe more than the impending coronary.

He wrenches open drawers and cupboards, scattering paper and medical paraphernalia. At last he finds it, a vial of liquid a shade of blue never found in nature. He locates a syringe. He's shaking so much he debates just swallowing the contents of the vial, but he manages to sink the needle in a vein.

His heart evens. His breath steadies. He sits on the floor, knowing that need will win against cowardice again, and wishes it could have waited a little longer.

He goes to the computer, opens the internal database, and types.

_Winter Soldier_

 

The dreams are worse that night, replete with knowledge of atrocities he doesn’t remember. It’s not the assassinations that get to him so much, the governments toppled, the soldiers killed. It’s the things not mentioned, the ordinary people in the way, the way each death recorded is written in the blood of thousands of others.

He lies awake between nightmares, reconciling his few memories with the timeline from the computer. It took few years to make him...compliant. He remembers those mostly, except for what the electroshock took. At least he knows now that Steve didn't come for him because the idiot was in an iceberg.

But after the surgeries, after the conditioning, after they were finished remaking him, he remembers almost nothing. He knows he was with the Soviets, for a while. It’s less memories and more faded knowledge of a language like the buzz of drunken honeybees, the scent of black tea, the bite of snow in the air.

A man both like and unlike his Captain, blond hair and blue eyes in the light. A promise of only a few more missions and then he can rest, a promise that was always a lie. Memories of pain, and memories of cold.

He closes his eyes, and the next time he wakes, he realizes he’s sharing his head with a ghost.

 

* * *

 

It’s a whisper at first, that wakes him. A whisper with no source that glides over his consciousness.

_Wrong._

He opens his eyes. Wrong what?

_Wrong._

He listens, letting his awareness rise past his own heartbeat, his own breathing. A rumble, low and far, but getting closer. Engines.

Well. He always knew time here was limited. Based on the sound, he has

_45 minutes_

He blinks. It wasn’t him who thought that, but no one else is around. No time to to figure it out. No time to run, he never packed a go bag. And anyway, whatever else he’s been, he’s still an American soldier and whoever they are, it’s ten to one they’re Nazis.

_HYDRA._

Same thing.

He retrieves the uniform from under the bed, and straps it on. He grabs his weapons, slotting knives into place. He cleans up the bedroom, makes it look like no one was ever there.

_30 minutes_

He spends some time making his obstacle course a little more obstacle and a little less course. He finds the holes he punched through walls and unwires his repairs.

_10 minutes_

Everything goes dark. He goes to the room with the chair. It’s still a mess, and he scatters the papers around more strategically. He drops his guns behind the wreckage of the pod door. He doesn’t want to look like a threat.

_5 minutes_

He hears the engines above him, hears them cut, hears footsteps pound the earth. A door opens, a rattle of metal and mechanics. He hears them fan out through the building, checking each room. He feels dark satisfaction when they run into his obstacle course.

_1 minute_

He stands in the middle of the room, loose and waiting. The soldiers hustle in, circling around him. He sizes them up. Not too many, and they’re nervous. Nervous means trigger happy, but nervous also means mistakes.

The one in front comes closer. James gives no indication he is anything other than the blank unfocused slate he is supposed to be without orders.

The man pulls out a piece of paper, fumbling to unfold it with gloved fingers. James barely stops himself from rolling his eyes. He knows things must be in disarray, but come on. Who writes down a top secret code to activate a dangerous weapon and _puts it in their pocket_?

The man clears his throat.

“Uh... _Toska, rzhavye, semnadtsat, rassvet, pech, devyatka, dobrosovestnost, vozvrashcheniye domoy, odin, gruzovoy avtomobil. Soldat?"_

The soldier stands a little more alert.

 "Well?” says the mercenary.

“Your accent is terrible,” says James, and throws his first knife.

 

* * *

 

It’s barely even a fight. Things must be really bad, if this is what they send to collect the Winter Soldier.

He has the last one by the throat, the rest scattered around, dead or not far from it.

“Who sent you?” he asks, knowing it’s futile.

“Hail HYDRA,” the mercenary chokes out, and bites down. James rams the man’s head against the floor, unwilling to grant him his glorified suicide. It makes a wet thud and Bucky stands. He kicks the corpse a few times to relieve his feelings about Nazis.

He strips the bodies, piling up gear and weapons in the middle of the room. He drags the corpses to the door they left open. Cold air hits him, smelling of snow and pine. He carries each body to a likely looking spot, and leaves it. Hopefully they’ll attract predators before the bodies freeze. He puts a few more holes in the corpses to make them smell more appealing to whatever’s around.

When he’s done, he wipes his hands clean on the snow. He stands at the edge of the bunker, tilting his face to the mid morning sun, and breathing in the fresh air. A bird calls. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen a sky so big.

But eventually more mercenaries will come, when this batch doesn’t report back, and he has no intention of dying here. It’s time to move on.

He packs a bag. Medication, weapons, water, clothing, food. At least now he has a reason for saving those MREs.

In his explorations, he had found a stash of cash and identities, and some even had his face. He selects a few and pockets the cash. The rest he takes outside and burns in a trash can, with the ids and wallets from the dead men.

He copies what he can from the HYDRA computers. It’s not everything, but it’s enough to get started.

He spends a few hours rigging explosives. He debates taking one of the vehicles, but they almost certainly have trackers, and he doesn’t know if he knows how to drive. In the end, he rigs them all with explosives too.

He finds himself grinning as he plays with C4 and wires. This is going to be fun. He grabs his bag, backs up some, and presses a button.

The resulting explosion is _intensely_ satisfying.

He stays until he’s sure the forest won’t catch on fire. Fucking up Nazi shit is no reason to make an ecological disaster. When the fires burn out, mostly what’s left is a hole.

He shoulders his pack, tugs on his gloves, and starts to walk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos make authors happy. Happy authors post more chapters. Make an author happy today!


	7. Chapter 7

Steve sagged into the couch, stunned. Bucky had been free for a year. And in New York. And he had had no idea.

Natasha leaned forward.

“Mrs. Salzmann, do you know what he is?”

Louisa gave her a look shared by schoolteachers and generals everywhere.

“Do not mistake my kindly demeanor for idiocy. I know what--and who--James is better than you do. You look at him and see a weapon like you, but a weapon with the safety off. Do not let your fear get the better of you. It makes you blind.”

Natasha blinked. Steve found his voice.

“What--what happened? How did he...why didn’t he--”

“I cannot tell you everything,” said Louisa. “First of all, I do not know everything that James experienced between waking up and coming here, nor do I know all of what he was up to after he left. Second, there are many things that are not mine to tell. But,” she continued, “I can perhaps straighten a few things out.

“James lived here for six months. I gave him a new past and a new name. He adapted quickly and with very few hiccups. In all that time, he never once became violent. While HYDRA did terrible things, they did not destroy him. Changed him, I am sure, but he is not a monster. He may be a weapon, but he is exactly as dangerous as you are, my dear.”

This was directed at Natasha, who still looked skeptical.

“But if you wish for a professional opinion, I believe Zareen Sidiqi will be happy to supply one.”

Louisa picked up her cup and twinkled as Natasha blinked again. Steve looked at her.

“Who?”

“Zareen Sidiqi is the foremost authority on mutant and meta trauma psychology,” said Natasha. “She worked with Charles Xavier for years. She’s even better at what she does than he is. Those two are the reason the earth hasn’t been blown up by a mutant kid with more anger and power than sense. How...”

“My husband was a quiet man, but he believed in encouraging promising young minds in his profession,” said Louisa. “Zareen was nothing if not promising. James was her patient for most of the time he lived here. By his own request, I might add. He approached me about getting help. I don’t know if he was always like this, or if it is a consequence of what was done to him, but James is refreshingly unafraid of admitting when he’s over his head. He will ask for help if he needs it.”

Natasha looked thoughtful. Steve felt buffeted.

“Now that I’ve said my piece, I’ll show you what he left,” Louisa said. She stood and led them to an airy guest room done up in grays and blues. On top of the dresser was a banker’s box.

“It’s all in there,” she said, nodding at it. Steve glanced through the contents. Laptop, usb drives, files. A few books. A wallet holding a driver’s license for a Joshua James Bernthal with Bucky’s picture. Steve lifted the box, and followed Natasha and Louisa to the front door.

“Thank you,” he said. The words were so inadequate, but he didn’t know how to say more. The older woman smiled.

“It was truly my pleasure.”

She lifted a soft blanket from the back of the couch and set it on top of the box, smoothing it gently with wrinkled hands.

“When he gets better, tell him I expect him for Sunday dinner.”

“Yes ma’am,” Steve said.

He and Natasha didn’t talk much on the way back to the Tower. She left him in the elevator, saying she had some calls to make. Steve slipped into Bucky’s room in the med bay.

The chairs had been replaced by a squashy couch, and houseplants had manifested. Steve smiled. Never one to settle for less than comfort, his wife.

He spread the blanket over Bucky.

“Louisa says hello,” he said.

He sat on the couch, and got to work.

 

* * *

 

In the end, they gave the data to Jarvis and Minerva. There was too much, too much information and too much horror. Sophie came down to find him, took one look at his face, and just held him for a while.

“Remember what I said about killing yourself?” she murmured. “Let us help. You don’t have to do this alone.”

She dragged him away to get food again, and took the files and data with her when she left.

“I can’t do much,” she said “but the one thing I can do is organize information.”

Steve sat on the couch and reread Terry Pratchett, to remind himself not everything was terrible. He became aware that Natasha was standing in the doorway sometime later. He glanced at her.

“I got ahold of Sidiqi,” she said. “She confirmed he’s clean.”

Steve looked at her blankly. She sat down next to him with a very un-Natasha like thud.

“I wasn’t worried about Barnes,” she said. “I was worried about what might still be in his brain. The things they do, people like that, to make people like us into what we are...they are unpleasant, and they leave things behind. In my early days with SHIELD, I had to be separated from almost everyone until I was deprogrammed. I didn’t have anyone nearly as good as Sidiqi. It was not pleasant."

“I’m sorry,” said Steve. Natasha bumped her shoulder to his.

“I survived. And so will he. He’s already ahead of where I was. Anyway,” she continued, “Sidiqi says she’s willing to testify in court or before Congress if it comes to that.”

Steve nodded. “And Clint?”

She gave an elegant shrug.

“He’ll come around. He just needs time.”

They sat side by side for a while, watching the figure on the bed.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Sophie gathered Steve, Natasha, Bruce, and Divya in a room and presented her results.

“Jarvis, Minerva and I divided it up into categories,” she said. “General information, medical data, current and historical HYDRA operations and locations, and ‘HYDRA is the worst and I am going to burn them down to the ground.’ I tried to come up with a snappier title for the last one, but looking at any of it reduced my vocabulary to swearwords and then I had to hide in the bathroom until I calmed down. It’s very unpleasant. Be warned.”

She paused.

“Our resident AIs have prepared summaries of what’s in the categories, and will give you whatever files you want, but for the time being: Everyone is getting a copy of general information. It’s just a run down of what we know and a timeline, insofar as we have been able to figure one out. Medical data to the med team” --she nodded at Divya-- “and the HYDRA information to the strategists.”

Steve’s tablet blooped at him as it downloaded files. The other members of what Steve had started to think of Team Bucky began flicking through their data. Natasha had her blank “I am having an emotion” face on. Divya yelped “They had him on _WHAT_? WHY ISN’T HE DEAD” and Bruce patted her soothingly. Sophie cleared her throat.

“I don’t know what to do with the Burn HYDRA Down to the Ground stuff. It’s the proof that James was under duress--everything they did to him. And some stuff they did to other people.  It’s...a lot. Some of it needs to go to the lawyers, some of it needs to go to the UN. It needs to be looked over by someone, and I... I can’t. I’ve seen more than I can deal with. I don’t want to subject anyone else to it. I don’t--”

“I’ll take it,” said Natasha. Steve opened his mouth to protest.

“You have enough to do,” she said, before he got a word out. “Minerva, if you will?”

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff.”

She stood. “If I find anything that will help with his treatment, I’ll let you know.”

Divya and Bruce followed her out, arguing about drug interactions. Steve walked Sophie up to their floor and left her there with Leif, giving the dog strict instructions to make her sleep. She stuck her tongue out at him.

He was halfway to the med bay when a voice came out of the walls.

“Captain Rogers?”

Steve didn’t know that AIs could sound hesitant.

“Yeah?”

“I feel you ought to know that Mr. Stark spent the better part of the night reading the files from Sergeant Barnes. In particular the ones Ms. Carbonell designated Burn HYDRA Down to the Ground.”

Steve stared.

“He did?”

“Yes. I may have hinted my processing power was predominantly occupied with this project, and Mr. Stark tends to be lead by his curiosity.”

Steve almost laughed. “Jarvis, you sneak.”

“It was my intent to present Mr. Stark with an opportunity to learn and reflect in an environment not so emotionally charged. It worked, I believe, but there were...unintended consequences.”

Jarvis’s delicate pause sounded ominous.

“Is he ok?”

“Mr. Stark is not in any danger but I believe he could, perhaps, use a friend.”

  


Steve walked into the workshop with his head ducked and his hands in his pockets. Tony looked up, red eyes and wild hair a testament to his night.

“What?” he snapped.

“We ran out of Deathwish, upstairs,” said Steve. It was a lie, but a believable one. It was the only coffee left in the world that gave him even a mild buzz, and he was hooked. Tony waved a hand at the espresso machine.

“You want any?” Steve asked. Tony gave a grunt that sounded vaguely affirmative. Steve pulled them both double shots and set Tony’s next to his elbow, retreating to a safe distance to sip his own.

“How’s your tin soldier?” Tony asked.

“Recovering,” Steve answered. “I think.”

“Good,” said Tony. “Bruce has better things to do than play nurse.”

“Why’s he hang out around you, then?” said Steve. This was safe, the meaningless ribbing, the gentle insults. Steve led Tony into a meandering conversation about whatever he was working on, until Tony looked straight at him and said “So, I’m an asshole.”

“Sometimes.”

“Last night, I learned some things and then Nat told me he’d been going to therapy and I know I jumped to conclusions, but I just--”

“I get it,” said Steve, with an easiness he didn’t feel. Nothing was easy right now. “I hated the TB patients for years after my mom died.”

Tony ran a hand through his hair.

“Why are we all tragic orphans? It’s like a goddamn Dickens novel in here.”

Steve snorted. Tony fidgeted with socket wrench.

“D’you think he’d like a new arm?”

A smile ghosted over Steve’s face.

“I don’t know. Ask him when he wakes up.”

 

* * *

 

For five days, Steve camped out in Bucky’s room. Machines beeped, Divya muttered things, occasionally one of his team members would appear. It was frequently Natasha, to tell or show Bruce or Divya things that made Bruce do breathing exercises and Divya swear in Korean. Once it was Clint, who stood in the door watching. He squeezed Steve’s shoulder, and then left without a word.

At least once a day, it was Tony. He would show up, saying he was designing a shelf and temperature stable nutritional supplement for famine relief and foist a concoction on Steve because “I need a test subject, and it’s not like you’re doing anything useful right now anyway, and you’re the only person who has a chance at burning off this kind of caloric load anyway.”

They were never the same in texture or temperature, and the taste was a game of roulette. Steve drank them all anyway, because he knew it was Tony’s way of showing support. His favorite so far was the one that tasted like kiwi flavored marshmallows. The hot maple bacon one was the worst.

He sat on the couch and talked to lawyers, to the press, to the remains of SHIELD, to the government. He sat on the couch and held Sophie’s hand and watched his best friend breathe.

On the sixth day, Divya said “I’m pulling him out now.”

Steve looked up from his third “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed in you” letter to a government official of the day.

“You’re what?”

“Most of his organs are functioning, so the coma did its duty,” she said. “I don’t know how fast he’ll shake off the drugs, or what he’ll be like while they’re wearing off.  Normally people take a few days, but I had use enough sedatives to knock out several elephants to keep him under at all. Once he’s off them, it might be quick. But take anything he says with a grain of salt. Or a bucket of salt. Comas are weird.”

Steve hardly heard her.

“He’s ok?”

She shrugged.

“He’s not actively dying. I don’t know about the rest of it. Y’all are uncharted medical territory, so everything else is...” She waved her hands vaguely, made a raspberry noise, and did something to Bucky’s IV.

“I’m gonna find coffee. Holler at me if anything interesting happens.”

Steve found himself unable to concentrate on his letter, gave up, and just stared at his friend. After about an hour, his breathing changed. Steve was at his bedside in an instant. Bucky’s eyes slammed open, and Steve could tell he was on the edge of panic.

“Bucky, it’s ok. It’s me. You’re safe.”

Bucky’s eyes latched onto Steve’s. One hand twitched toward him, an aborted, instinctual urge for contact. Steve took it in his own. Bucky subsided, the panic fading.

“...stay...”

It was barely a whisper.

“I’m here,” said Steve. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He reached over to brush his friend’s hair back and Bucky leaned into the touch, closing his eyes. Steve wasn’t sure if his heart swelled or broke. He stayed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has An Emotion. Thor employs the Socratic method.

* * *

 

Bucky slept for hours. It was a real sleep this time, not the eerie half sleep of the coma. The machines whirred and beeped in a way that Steve had begun to find comforting, because it meant nothing new had gone wrong. 

Steve watched him sleep and felt like he could finally breathe. But with the exhale, the knowledge that yes, Bucky was really here, and yes, Bucky was really alive, and yes, Bucky had been alive and aware and _ hadn’t come to him _ started to finally sink in. And with it came the anger.

He _ hadn’t come. _

Steve turned abruptly, and almost ran into Bruce as he came in to check something.

“You ok?” he asked. Steve schooled his features into something less like existential panic.

“Yeah, I just...need some air,” he said. He slipped out before Bruce could press him and made his way to the roof.

He stared at the city below him, unseeing. They had always made their way back to each other, when they were kids. When the world was falling apart. During the war. 

In college, he had learned about binary star systems, orbiting each other, tethered to a common center. They drifted apart, but they always came together, tied by an invisible fundamental of the universe. He had drawn a parallel that only seemed to get more apt as time went on. But now...

He heard a crunch of gravel behind him and turned.

“Steven,” said Thor. “I hear you have recovered your lost friend. I am happy for you.”

“Oh,” said Steve. “Yeah. Thanks. I didn’t know you were...around.”

Thor’s whereabouts were a perennial mystery. The last Steve heard, the Asgardian had been dealing with some political upheaval. Or family drama. It amounted to the same thing for him, more or less. 

“We arrived yesterday,” he answered. “Jane wanted real bagels. Apparently the bagels in Norway are a mockery.”

Thor came to stand beside him. He studied the clouds and Steve stared at the ground.

“How are you?” Thor asked.

“Me? I’m fine. Better than fine. It’s amazing. To have him back. To have someone from...home, I guess.”

“Yes, I have often noticed that men reunited with their lost loved ones stare sadly into the distance from the top of buildings,” said Thor.

Steve cracked an unwilling smile.

“It’s a lot to process. You know how long I’ve been looking for him. But it turns out he’s been out there for more than year. And I didn’t even know.”

Thor nodded. Steve had noticed, before, that Thor had a gift of quiet presence that invited confidences, and Steve found himself caught by it. 

“I just don’t understand why he didn’t come to me,” Steve said. “He was on his own for months. He was in New York. I was right there! I would have done anything--everything--” Steve stopped. “Why didn’t he trust me?”

He felt small, once again a child who had never felt good enough, no matter what he did, and he hated it. Thor had the courtesy to pretend not to notice that Steve’s voice was choked with tears.

“When you were in battle, the both of you, what was Bucky’s role?” he asked.

“He was a sniper,” said Steve, grateful for any change of subject. “And he did a fair amount of the scouting. They--the guys--were always ragging on me about being a mother hen, but Bucky was the real overprotective one. I just wanted the guys to sleep and clean up after themselves, but Bucky...he was always climbing trees and sneaking ahead, or falling behind because he ‘had a feeling’. Got to the point where we’d hardly see him some days, but we always knew he was watching our six.”

“But he followed you?”

“I guess” said Steve. “I was honestly more of a figurehead than anything, someone for the folks back home to focus on. On the ground, everyone had a voice. We did things together.”

“And before your war? What were the two of you then?”

“When we were kids? We were trouble. Well, I was trouble. Mostly he was following me into it, or trying to get me out of it, or trying stop me from getting into it in the first place. That last one never worked much, but he stuck around anyway.”

Steve glanced at Thor, who was looking across the skyline with the ineffable, kind patience he always wore when he was waiting for someone to catch up with an obvious conclusion. 

“I know he always looked after me,” Steve said, beginning to feel annoyed. He hated that face. “That’s the story everyone tells about him. Bucky Barnes, Cap’s best friend who kept him safe. No one ever talks about the time he had pneumonia from working at the docks all winter and I had to practically sit on him for three weeks until he got better. Or when his mom died and he gave himself alcohol poisoning and I sat up all night making sure he didn’t drown in his own vomit. Or the times when he couldn’t get work and it was my cartoons paying our rent.”

Steve had stories, he had so many stories, of him and Bucky. Of him taking care of Bucky when Bucky was too stupid or angry or tired to do it himself. Of making sure there was food on the table so Bucky wouldn’t have to cook after work, and picking glass splinters out of his hands after a bar fight gone way south. Of sewing buttons back on his shirts and darning his fucking socks so they’d last one more month, just one more month. So many stories that no one wanted to hear. He stopped, trying to let go of the rising anger.

“We took care of each other. We always took care of each other. We were all we had.”

“Ah, no, you misunderstand,” said Thor “I have no doubt you took care of him before your transformation. You are incapable of doing otherwise. It is only...if he had come to you, after his escape, what would have happened then?"

Steve looked blank.

“We would have done what he did, I guess. With the intel he had...we would have rooted out every Hydra cell we could. Together.”

“And we--the Avengers--would have followed,” said Thor. “And it would be a glorious story for the world to follow. Captain America, his best friend back at his side, leading a team to smite the Nazis in their newest disguise. Deeds to inspire song and story for new generations.”

Thor turned from the skyline to study Steve’s face. 

“Steven...there are some people in these worlds who by strength of will or brightness of soul or sheer force of charisma draw others to them like moths to the moon. My father was one of them, Tony is one of them. I fear have become one of them, in spite of myself. We warp the world around us, a weight in the fabric of the universe. And you have always been like this, even when you were unwell. You could walk into hell and come out leading a revolution of the damned.”

Steve wanted to protest, out of habit and embarrassment, but he knew he had an effect on people. He might not like it, and he might try not think about it much, but he wasn’t blind.

“What do you think would happen if a man who had lost himself came to you?” continued Thor. “If the new self he had developed was a tenuous thing, easily overwhelmed? Would he keep this self, this thing barely born, or would it be easier for him to become what a shining bright soul told him he was?”

Thor might as well have punched him in the solar plexus.

“I wouldn’t--I would never--” 

Thor held up a hand.

“I know. You are a good man, and a good friend. But you are young enough that you do not yet see fully your effect on those around you. From what I know about Bucky’s experience since your war, he was forced to become what others wanted, over and over, in unkind ways. Can you blame him for wanting time to see who he was, free from the influence of anyone who knew him? It is easy to become what we think those we love want us to be, if we do not know ourselves, and I think James needed to do what he did for himself. To know that he could. To discover who he was before he decided who he should become.”

Steve knew, under his anger, that Thor was right. And it wasn’t like he had never had the need to prove himself. He could sympathize. Thor turned back to the horizon.

“I do not deny that he left it a bit late. But now he has returned to you, and all shall be well.”

Steve let his eyes follow the shape of the sky, and wished for the uncomplicated certainty of gods. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky makes a friend, does a therapy, discovers fruit.

* * *

 

It takes a few weeks for him to reach New York. It would be faster, but Bucky discovers he can only travel for so long before the ghost decides it wants to kill everyone. He holes up in hotel rooms and sleeps until the urge to murder recedes. People are so _loud_.

Along the way, he acquires a smartphone, a laptop, and a good working knowledge of why everyone loves and hates modern technology.

He stumbles into New York and up to the door of the one of the last neutral information brokers in the world.

“Sorry to bother you, but could I borrow some salt?” he manages, when the door opens. It’s been a few days since he left his last hotel hidey hole and the world is grating on him.

The woman at the door blinks at him. She looks like someone’s rich grandma.

“Salt?”

“From the Red Sea?” he says.

“Oh,” she says. “ _That_ kind of salt. I haven’t had that kind of salt in years.”

Bucky sags against the wall. His heart is doing its angry donkey thing, and the ghost is advocating murder. He runs his hand through his hair, scrubs his face.

“However...” she says. He looks up and meets eyes that are sharper than anyone’s have a right to be. “I believe I have some tea. Come inside, dear.”

He sinks into a couch and accepts a cup of tea--black, with a slice of lemon. It’s hot and bitter and perfect.

“Thank you,” he says, feeling incrementally more like a person.

“You’re welcome,” says the woman. She fixes him with the kind of look a curious eagle might give a rustling patch of grass.

“Now tell me, what is the Winter Soldier doing in my living room asking for sanctuary?”

“Honestly?” he answers. “I have no idea.”

* * *

 

In the end, he tells her...not everything, but more than he had intended.

“I took what I could, and started here,” he finishes. He sets the USBs on the coffee table. “I started looking through it, but it’s...a lot.”

It also made him full of murder. He had stopped looking through it.

“I could do with a project,” she says. She looks at the USB drives the same covetous way his little sister used to look at hair ribbons. “What do you need?”

“The locations of HYDRA bases and installations. The other information to get to people who are in a position to do something useful about it, eventually.” He thinks for a moment and his heart gives another kick. “A nap.”

She chuckles, and collects his cup.

“We’ll start with the latter, and I will see what I can do about the others.”

She leads him to a spare room. It’s cozy and soothing, but all he really sees is the bed. There’s a fluffy blanket on it. It looks _amazing_.

“Bathroom is across the hall. No boots on the bed. Take as much time as you need.”

She leaves and he forces himself not to scrabble at his bag to get the drugs. He lays out the supplies, as though careful deliberateness somehow negates the fact he’s a fucking addict.

He shoots up and it settles over him, a blessed coolness through his veins. He breathes out.

He obediently removes his shoes before curling up under the blanket. It’s even better than it looks. He’s asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.

When he wakes, he follows the sound of typing until he finds his hostess sitting at a computer set up that he thinks would do Stark’s son proud. He clears his throat and she spins around, beaming.

“You have brought me treasures,” she says.

“Good?” he says.

“Oh yes. It’s going to take months to get it all sorted, though,” she says. “Did you have a timeline?”

He thinks back to the vials of blue liquid sitting in his bag and does a quick calculation.

“I could spare a few months.”

“Excellent,” she says. “I’m Louisa, by the way.” She holds out a hand.

“James,” he says, and shakes.

* * *

 

The next day, they eat bagels for breakfast and commit identity fraud. He decides on Joshua James Bernthal, distant relative of her deceased husband, an army vet with a case of wanderlust.

“How rich do you want to be?” she asks, peering at her screen.

“What?” he asks. He’s found this entire experience to be like getting very gently steamrollered.

“I’ve found some very nice accounts in this mess,” she says, indicating the HYDRA files. “They probably won’t even notice, and if they do, I have enough VPNs and shell companies they’ll chase around in circles until they’re dizzy.”

James thinks about seventy years of free assassinations.

“Clean ‘em out.”

Louisa purses her lips. “Bold. I like it.”

“I gotta start planning for my retirement,” he says.

Louisa cackles and hits a button and suddenly James is a very rich man.

* * *

 

He spends a few weeks getting his bearings. Louisa’s daughter and her kids come over for Sunday dinners. The daughter, Rachel, just looks at him and says “Another one of your ducklings, I see” and her kids teach him to play Mario Kart. Sometimes they bring their dog, a Golden Retriever named Timmy, who falls asleep on his feet and drools all over his boots.

He finds a coffee shop at the foot of Stark’s tower and gets a coffee. He stares up for a while, wondering which window is Steve’s.

His sleeping patterns--or lack thereof--leave him with a lot of spare time at random hours. He starts to take walks, reacquainting himself with the city. He learns that almost everywhere Steve ever lived, and quite a few places he didn’t, have plaques proclaiming to be the home of Captain America. Sometimes the plaques mention him, in smaller letters, further down. He doesn’t know how he feels about being a footnote in someone else’s history.

He also learns that New York has more superheroes than anywhere else on the planet, primarily by trying to stop crimes in other people’s territory. There’s a man in red in Hell’s Kitchen, a skinny kid climbing walls in Queens, and a bulletproof bar owner in Harlem. Chinatown has some idiot with a glowing fist and Bucky feels a little bad for the neighborhood. No one seems to have adopted Brooklyn, so Bucky mostly walks there.

He spends a lot of days curled up on Louisa’s couch, catching up with the world while she clicks away on her keyboard. He reads every book in her house and falls down internet rabbit holes. He discovers he likes quantum physics, romance novels, and parkour. He decides he’ll never understand memes, but they kind of grow on him anyway.

Some of the future isn’t great. Politics seems to be the same as it ever was. But modern medicine, that blows him away. A couple kids in his building had polio from the 1916 epidemic, and the fact that will never happen again in the States is...absurd. And wonderful.

Some of the great advances in medicine, he learns, are in the field of what is now called mental health.

He finds this out by googling “voices in head” after a solid three nights of the ghost informing him that everything is wrong when nothing is. He falls down another internet rabbit hole, and comes out feeling raw and bewildered.

“Your husband was a psychologist, right?” he asks Louisa, when he gets her to surface for lunch. He’s taken over most of the cooking, because it seems like the least he can do.

“Ben?” she says. “Yes. A good one, if I say so myself.”

“Do you still know...anyone? I think I need some help.”

He has something like an echo, a feeling like he ought to be ashamed, but he can’t deal with this on his own. Another night like the last one and he’ll blow his brains out. Or worse, start listening.

Louisa nods. “Good for you. I’ll make some calls.”

Her calls bear fruit in the form of a video call with a woman in a hijab who introduces herself as Zareen.

“Louisa tells me you’re looking for some help,” she says.

James nods.

“Did she tell you--” He stops, unsure of how to continue. The fact I’m a brainwashed assassin? That I was on ice for most of a century? That I have a raging case of what I think is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and also possibly a switch in my head that turns me into a killing machine?

“...about me?” he finishes.

“Not a lot,” says Zareen. “I know you’ve seen a lot of combat, and you’re recently out of a bad situation and trying to acclimate to a new life. And that your identity is...sensitive information.”

He snorts. Zareen smiles slightly.

“I was trying to sound less dramatic than ‘top secret’ or ‘a fugitive hiding from several governments.’ It didn’t really work, did it?”

She sobers.

“I know who you are, James. I know, broadly, what you have survived. I have helped others like you, and everything you choose to tell me I will hold in confidence. I would be more than happy to work with you, if you decide I would be a good match for what you want.”

He nods again.

“Good,” she says. “What are you looking for help with?”

“I’ve been having some...issues, I guess. So I did some research,” he says. “Based on my symptoms and what happened to me, I think I have Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and maybe Dissociative Identity Disorder. And also there’s the fact I was brainwashed and programmed and I’m pretty sure there’s still stuff left in my head that could get switched on and I’d kill everyone around me. I should probably be locked in a cage, to be honest.”

“Considering what you’ve been through, I’m not surprised at your diagnoses,” says Zareen. “But being locked in a cage is not what I would call a healing environment, so perhaps we can set that idea aside for now. Unless you think it would help?”

She says it totally straight faced and earnest, but James sees the barest hint of mischief in her dark eyes. He feels an answering smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

“Probably not.”

“If your self-diagnoses are correct--and I am not saying you are wrong about them, but we doctors are too proud to admit patients are capable of knowing their own heads without us--I can help you learn tools and techniques that will perhaps ease your way. As for the leftover programming...” She pauses. “What did Louisa tell you about me?”

“Not a lot,” he echoes. “Just that her husband knew you, and you’re very good at what you do.”

“I like to think so,” says Zareen. “I also have some more...unique skills. Are you familiar with the term telepath?”

Cold fingers of alarm trace their way down his spine.

“You can get in people’s heads?”

“I don’t need to read minds to see you’re uncomfortable with the idea, so let me assure you I have not and will not invade your privacy. There’s a reason I meet my clients over a call for at least the first time. My abilities don’t work over video chat.”

James relaxes a little.

“How do they work, then?”

“Primarily, I’m an empath,” Zareen says. “If I’m near someone, I know what they’re feeling. If I touch someone, it becomes more telepathic. I studied with people who not only taught me to control my abilities, but use them to help others. I can, with someone’s permission, step inside their mind and sort out...things that need sorting. But _only_ with their permission.”

James turns this over in his mind. He doesn’t like the idea of anyone poking around in his brain again, but he also doesn’t like the idea of having HYDRA leftovers in there.

“That kind of psychic surgery requires a large amount of trust,” Zareen continues. “The kind of trust that takes months to build. But if you decide it is something you are interested in pursuing, the option is there. If you decide you want to work with me purely in my capacity as a therapist, that is fine. If you decide you don’t want to work with me at all, that is also fine, and I can give you the names of other possibilities. And you do not need to decide anything at all right now.”

James studies her for a moment. She lets him, a patient presence with kind eyes. He’s pretty sure she’s not hiding anything, and he’s also pretty sure she will take exactly no bullshit from anyone.

“I think you’ll work,” he says.

She smiles.

“Good. So tell me, what’s it like, being you right now?”

The words fall out before he has a chance to think them through.

“I have a ghost in my head.”

* * *

 

She listens to him talk, asking quiet questions when he gets tangled. When he’s done trying to explain what it’s like inside his mind, he thinks he sees the value of a therapist who could just look in and see for herself. He tells her as much.

“How much would it annoy you if I said that trying to articulate your experiences is probably a helpful step in processing them?”

He narrows his eyes.

“A lot.”

“Then I won’t,” she says, cheerfully. “But now you know it anyway.”

He swears, and she chuckles. He agrees to another video chat session in a few days, and wanders out to the living room.

“How’d it go?” asks Louisa. She doesn’t look away from her computer, but he’s not fooled by her studied lack of attention.

“Good, I think,” he answers, curling up on the couch. “You?”

“I found another one,” she says. “It’s in Thailand.”

“That’ll be a nice vacation,” says Bucky. He pulls the fluffy blanket over himself and goes to sleep.

* * *

 

Meetings with Zareen join the structure of the life he is building. He learns things that help. He doesn’t really talk about what happened to him, and she seems more interested in how he’s dealing with his present anyway.

He also realizes that he is _deeply_ fucked up.

Despite the fact he can’t remember anything, he and his ghost still manage to find things to go bugfuck about on what feels like a daily basis. A smell, an accidental brush on the crowded sidewalks, someone on the street who looks almost but not quite familiar.

Zareen tells him memories aren’t always stored in the brain, that bodies know things minds don’t. Zareen also tells him panic attacks and dissociative episodes are very common symptoms of PTSD.

He thinks, after snapping outside of a Starbucks because someone smelled like menthols and had aviator glasses and coming to in New Jersey with no recollection of how he got there, that bugfuck is a more accurate term.

She gets him to start writing things down. At first it’s just a list of things he knows he enjoys, because sometimes he forgets about things like “enjoyment” and “feelings” and "being a person."

 

_Eating food_

_Making food_

_Books_

_The fluffy blanket_

_Watching other people make food_

_Walks_

_Climbing things that aren’t meant to be climbed_

_Learning things_

_That moment at where most of bar hoppers have gone home and most of the early shifters aren’t out yet, and New York is as quiet as it ever gets_

 

It morphs, slowly, into something more like a journal--observations, recipes, things he’s done he feels good about, things he means to do that he doesn’t want to forget.

 

_Watching Iron Chef and wondering why in god’s name anyone would deep fry cherry tomatoes. Actually, why does anyone deep fry anything that’s not doughnuts?_

_...I wonder how hard it is is to make a doughnut...how much is a deep fryer?_

 

_Went for a walk and ended up at a dog park. Have dogs all gotten smaller in the last century or did I just get bigger?_

 

_Note to self: people deep fry things because it’s delicious._

 

_Wandered into a barbershop because it was playing good music and ended up with a haircut. That’s a lie, I wanted a haircut but had to trick myself into going to the barber by pretending it was an accident. The barber wears a suit better than I ever did and she kept calling me sugar. I’m keeping her._

 

_I had an avocado today. Where have these been? Who was keeping them from me? Can I deep fry them?_

 

It takes him a while, but halfway through an entry about a recent walk around Coney Island he writes _Remember when I blew all our money trying to win a stuffed bear for that redhead,_ and he realizes what he’s actually doing is talking to Steve.

He also realizes two more things:  He is still desperately, hopelessly, uselessly in love with Steve Rogers, and under no circumstances can he go back to Steve Rogers.

He carefully sets his pen down, pulls out his phone, and texts Zareen.

* * *

 

When she arrives, she finds him huddled in a window seat, wrapped in his blanket. She stops a few feet away.

“Oof,” she says. “That hit you like a truck, didn’t it?”

He turns to face her and nods.

“Can you talk?”

He shakes his head.

“Can you write?”

He thinks about it and shrugs. She hands him his tablet and folds herself gracefully onto the floor.

“Tell me.”

He types, awkward and one-handed, and flips the tablet around to face her.

_Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead, except for him, and I’ll never see him again._

“Who?” she asks, even though he knows she knows who. There’s only ever been one him. He rolls his eyes.

_Steve._

“I’ll admit, I’ve been curious why you haven’t reached out to him since you woke up. From what you’ve told me, you care for him deeply.”

Understatement of the century, but he nods anyway.

“So what’s stopping you from reaching out?”

_I realized, today. Even when I think I’m talking to myself, I’m talking to him._

Zareen cocks her head, an invitation to elaborate. Bucky lets out a soundless, bitter exhalation.

_If I reach out, I won’t stop. I won’t stop until I’m back with him, until it’s like I never left and nothing happened and I can’t. I can’t go back and just be the person he wants. Be Bucky._

“Do you feel like he won’t be able to accept the person you are now?”

He shakes his head. Given the chance, Steve would accept him utterly and with grim determination, and somehow that would be even worse than pretending nothing had happened.

 _No, it’s not that. It’s that I wouldn't know how_ not _to be Bucky, but I’m not anymore. Too much has happened. I can’t just...go back. But I would try._

“From what I know, your Steve has considerable force of personality,” says Zareen. James snorts. Another contender for understatement of the century.

“Do you not trust yourself to hold your own?” she asks.

He considers this. It’s almost right.

_I don’t have enough my own to hold._

The sentence makes no sense, but Zareen, bless her, understands.

“Fortunately, a sense of self is something we can build,” she says. “It takes time, especially after something like what you’ve gone through, but it’s doable.”

 _The thing is, I’ve known him all my life_ . _Even when we had nothing, we had each other._

He’s not sure where he’s going with this, but the thought feels important.

_All I ever wanted was to keep him safe. We built ourselves together, back before everything. But he doesn’t need me anymore, he’s built himself a life without me. And I’m happy for him._

“I know you are,” says Zareen. James knows she does, because the happiness and pride in what Steve is and who he has become burns inside him like a forest fire.

“And yet I feel a ‘but’ coming,” she prods.

He stares at his mismatched hands.

“The problem is,” he says, slowly, “I have no idea who I am without him.”

Zareen leans forward to look up into his face, her eyes brown and warm.

“Well,” she says, “who do you want to be?”

* * *

 

The question rattles around inside his head for months.

It’s the implication of choice that gets him the most, the idea that somehow he can just pick pieces out of the wreckage, out of the world around him, and build something.

“You say it like it’s so easy,” he accuses Zareen, later, when he’s had a string of bad days. “Like I can just shake it all off and start over.”

He had gone to the bodega down the street to feed his avocado addiction, and instead the ghost had vividly planned the fastest way to murder everyone in there, because the commercial on the radio had mentioned Coca-Cola and something smelled like bleach.

“No,” she answers. “I say it like it’s simple. They are two different things.”

He opens his mouth to whine again, and then snaps it shut because she’s right, damn her. He flops down on the couch and whines anyway.

“But it’s haaaard.”

“Yes,” says Zareen. “Things worth doing often are.”

James knows if he looks up from the pillow his face is buried in, she’ll be looking at him, sympathetic but implacable.

“I was inches away from killing someone’s abuela,” he says to the pillow. “Inches. What happens when I can’t stop myself? Him. Whatever.”

“But you did stop yourself,” she answers. “We can play the what if game for eternity, James, but it didn’t happen. You recognized that you were not in a good place and removed yourself from the stressful situation. You don’t want to be the kind of person who kills bodega abuelas, so you decided not to be, and now you aren’t. And you can make that decision again, if necessary.”

“I guess.” He turns over to stare at the ceiling. “It’s just...How am I supposed to figure out who to be if I’m not the only one in here? And the other guy’s a murderous unpredictable asshole?”

“Have you tried asking him?”

James turns his head to stare at his therapist.

“What.”

“Your ghost. Have you tried asking him what he wants?”

“I know what he wants,” says James. “He’s very clear on that. It’s murder. All he wants is to murder.”

“Does he?” says Zareen. “Do you wake up and he tells you to kill everyone? Does he advocate for murder when you’re cooking dinner?”

James rolls his eyes. “No.”

“Because it sounds like,” Zareen persists, “he surfaces in particular situations.”

“I guess,” he says, eventually. He knows he sounds like a sulky child, but if he can’t pout at his therapist, what is she even for. She waits while he assembles his thoughts into something resembling coherence.

“When there’s too much. Or too loud. Or something is wrong. Or something reminds me of...things.”

Like bleach and a Coke jingle, like the loud press of people at a train station, like the rumble of engines in the distance.

“When you’re overstimulated, or there’s an environmental trigger. When some part of your brain perceives danger. Does that sound right?”

He nods. Words are hard.

“Sometimes...it helps. He helps. When there is something actually wrong. But mostly it’s like the bodega.”

“It seems like, to me, every time he’s come up, he’s trying to tell you something. But he only knows one way to communicate.”

James shrugs.

“Maybe if you give him another way to communicate, it would help,” says Zareen. “So try asking him. See what happens.”

* * *

 

He’s lying in bed later, trying to sleep, but he can’t stop mulling over what she said. He doesn’t particularly want to encourage the murder ghost to take a more active role in his brain, but he also doesn’t want to be at war with himself forever.

“Well,” he says out loud, “I’m listening. Why d’you keep doing this?”

Inside his head, the ghost stirs, the restless ripple of a fish in a deep pool. He waits, but the feeling subsides.

“Bunch of fucking bullshit,” he mutters. He turns over and lets the city lull him to sleep.

That night, he dreams. He’s in the mountains, high and biting cold. He’s in a field strewn with corpses, smoke on the wind and the rattle of guns in the distance. He’s in a nightclub, the air full of smoke and the guttural flow of German.

Ahead of him walks a man in black, light glancing off his left arm. His steps are tense but quiet, his gaze scanning the horizon, the gun in his hands ready.

Bucky is in a hallway, and he knows where it leads, and he can taste the metal and feel the pain. The man walks ahead of him. Bucky doesn’t want to keep going, but his feet walk on.

The man stops, blocking the doorway. He faces the darkness inside. His feet planted. His gun ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are love. Validate meeeeeeeee


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

James wakes up because he feels someone staring at him. It doesn’t feel like a threat, but it’s enough to make his other half poke him. He opens his eyes to meet a stare from the bottom of his bed. The dog opens its mouth in a friendly pant of greeting.

He recognizes it as the dog with Steve’s wife, from when he passed out in front of her.

“Good...morning?” he says. His voice is rusty. The dog cocks its head. “Leif, right?”

Leif’s ears go back and he thumps his tail sedately. He looks like a cross between a Belgian Malinois and an American Pit Bull Terrier, but bigger. James starts to shift to the side so he can get out of the bed and maybe figure out where he is. Leif lays down across on his legs and rests his head on James’s knees meaningfully. He’s not aggressive, just definitive. And very heavy.

“I guess I’ll stay here then,” James says. He holds a tentative hand out to the dog, who sniffs it and shoves his nose under it for pets. James obliges. He’s so absorbed by this unexpected joy he doesn’t realize someone’s approached until he hears a voice say “Oh. You’re awake.”

Leif’s tail wags in greeting and James’s eyes get stuck halfway up when he realizes who it is.

“I meant to be here,” says Steve.

“It’s alright,” he answers. “Dog kept me from running off.”

Steve’s wearing faded jeans and navy hoodie over a white t-shirt, and holding a cup full of something a violent shade of pink. James fixates on it.

“What the hell is that?”

It better not be something he’s supposed to drink. Anything that bright is trying to signal that it’s poisonous.

“A mistake,” says another voice. Steve’s wife appears from behind him and takes the cup, followed by another dog. This one looks like a mix of Greyhound and Golden Retriever, long haired and sleek. Like Leif, it’s much bigger than he feels it ought to be. It’s also holding two leashes in its mouth and prancing back and forth with impatience. Leif perks up.

“Bucky, this is Sophia,” says Steve.

“Sophie,” she says. ““Glad to see you’re up.” She shoots him a smile of easy sincerity.

“James,” he says. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for. Uh.”

She waves his words away before he gets them lined up. “Don’t worry about it. As much as I hate to interrupt Leif’s massage, I need to run the dogs before Honey eats the building.”

The golden dog yips around the leashes. Leif hops off the bed, taking one leash in his own mouth.

“I’ll pick up breakfast, too,” says Sophie. “You want anything?” she adds with a glance at James. Food sounds repulsive, but...

“Coffee?” The desperate hope in his voice is honestly a little embarrassing.

“I’ll see what I can sneak past the doctor,” she says. She pecks Steve on the cheek and leaves, Honey jangling after her. Leif glances at James, and then fixes Steve with a look and whines.

“I know, but I’d rather you go with Sophia,” Steve says, for all the world like he’s talking to a person. “We’ll be fine.”

Leif’s expression clearly indicates doubt, but he follows Sophie and the other dog anyway.

“Your dogs are weird,” says James.

“They’re not exactly dogs,” Steve answers. “Thor gave them to us.”

“That’s the guy with the lightning, right?” James knows who Thor is, but he figures the longer he draws out this conversation, the longer he can avoid the inevitable, other conversation.

“Yeah,” says Steve. He pours a glass of water, hands it to James. “He’s from another planet. Or dimension, or something.”

“Alien dogs,” says James. He takes a sip. He spent the morning petting an alien dog. This is his life now.

“Yeah,” says Steve. “Sophie wanted a service dog, but the life we lead...Thor said these dogs would be able to deal with whatever comes up. It’s worked out pretty well.”

He drags a chair over, sits down, crosses his arms.

“So.”

“So,” James echoes. “Guess I’m not dead.”

“Yep,” says Steve. His voice is level, but James sneaks a look at his expression and recognizes the set jaw and blazing eyes of Steve’s Really Truly Actually Angry Face.

“Steve, I--”

“You _asshole._ I have been looking for you for _over a year._ _”_

* * *

 

It started with Zola. The former HYDRA scientist had been trickling out information about old Soviet cells and operations in exchange for...whatever. Steve hadn’t paid much attention. As far as he was concerned, Zola was in prison and it was done. He had other things to do.

Natasha kept him updated, if there was anything he needed to know. Natasha went on most of the ops in the former USSR, because she knew the languages, and liked to keep her hand in SHIELD when she could, and for complicated, Natasha-ish reasons of her own.

One night, she slipped into his and Sophia’s apartment, into his bedroom, and woke him with a touch and a whisper. He took a look at her face and led her to his kitchen, where he poured them both whiskey.

“I had a hunch,” she said. She kept her voice low. Steve couldn’t tell if it was a courtesy for a still sleeping Sophia, or an attempt at keeping herself under control. “I had a hunch, and I wanted to know if I was right before I said anything.”

Natasha never brought other people in on her suspicions until she had proof. Of all the things Steve wished for her, the ability to trust other people to believe her was the one he wished the most.

She produced a folder and dropped it on the table between them. Steve flipped it open.

The world stood still.

“Did you know?” he demanded, after time started back up. He knew as much of her past as SHIELD did, and then a little more, but she was never exactly forthcoming.

“No,” she answered. “I never connected it. My memory is...piecemeal, at best, before SHIELD. Even what I do remember, I never know if it’s real. And I’ve never found it helpful to dwell. But something shook loose, a while ago, and then I had a hunch.”

Russian wasn’t Steve’s best language, but Natasha could tell he had puzzled out enough. He had moved from shock and rage to his cold, pure fury. His fingers traced a picture. She didn’t even think he was aware he was doing it.

“I haven’t told anyone,” she said. “It’s your decision, what to do.”

“Do you think he’s still...” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But if you start looking, I’m with you. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m with you.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

She disappeared like she came, steps unhurried and soft. Steve took one last look at the folder before he flipped it shut and got to work.

* * *

 

He was striding through the halls of the Raft a few hours later. He’d left a scribbled note for Sophia, and thrown on his uniform, because he needed both the authority and the reminder that he represented more than himself these days. If he wasn’t being Cap, he might just kill somebody.

A wide-eyed underling showed him into the interrogation room where Zola had been put.

“Captain America. So you are the reason I have been pulled from my bed.”

Steve had no patience for the verbal sparring. He threw the file on the table.

“Where is he?”

Zola’s fingers crawled across the papers.

“Ah, your Sergeant Barnes. I had wondered if he would surface, in SHIELD’s less than diligent digging. I retain a certain fondness for him.” He stroked a photograph. “One often does, for one’s first real creation.”

“Where is he?” Steve asked again.

“He was the beginning of many things. He lead to much finer work, and was therefore rendered...obsolete. The Cold War was a time of great discovery for me.”

Steve’s hands curled around the edges of the table.

“Where. Is. He.”

“Captain Rogers, you must understand, I left the organization a long time ago. I have no idea where he is now. But perhaps...”

A delicate pause, an invitation for bargaining to begin. Steve growled, low and feral.

“If you tell me what you know, I won’t kill you,” he managed. He uncurled his hands from the table. Imprints remained dented in the metal, and Zola knew when to fold. He sighed.

“The branches of HYDRA were not close, in the previous century. It was easier to rebrand, in many ways, and the East kept many things for itself. But sometimes a show of good faith was called for. A gift, as it were.”

A suspicion, unwilling and horrible, began to dawn in Steve’s mind. Zola looked up at him from his mockery of a face.

“Yes, I believe they gave him to the Americans.”

* * *

 

In the following months, Steve would catch himself humming a song he learned from Monty.

_Yet let's be content,_

_and the times lament,_

_you see the world turned upside down._

After Zola, Steve had gone straight to Fury, demanding answers. Fury began to poke around, and HYDRA tried to kill him.

That was Natasha’s last straw. She slipped away on a few covert missions, and took what she learned to Sophia. Sophia and Minerva dug up secrets and dumped them out for the world to see.

Revelations shook loose, rocking both the Avengers and the American government to its core. Assassination attempts and suspicious suicides spread like a pandemic. People took to the streets, demanding to know what had happened, what was happening, what the truth was, and Steve marched with them.

The world had turned upside down, and Steve was going to hold it there and shake out its pockets until he found what he was after.

He followed crumbs and the words of desperate men across the world. He found bits and pieces that didn’t line up, whispers of a ghost with perfect aim. He found HYDRA bases already empty and wiped of data, bodies fed to scavengers or buried in mass graves. He found an ashen pit in the wilds on the border of Montana and the Dakotas. He found a story seventy years long, shot through with betrayals and drenched in blood.

He didn’t find Bucky.

* * *

 

“You knew it was me?” James cuts into Steve’s aggrieved tirade.

“Not until after the bodies started showing up, and then I figured who else would be dumb enough to try and take down HYDRA by themselves?”

James could say something about pots and kettles, but the only way to deal with Steve on a tear is to let him go on until he tires himself out.

“I followed your trail for months, Bucky, _months_ , and then I find out from your landlady you were in New York before I even knew you were still alive.”

“I had things needed doing,” says James. It’s both comforting and disturbing, how quickly he falls back into the rhythm of arguing with Steve, a twenty year old ritual of call and response. Steve leans forward.

“Oh, and what, you couldn't drop a postcard in the mail? I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead for _years_ ,” Steve says. “And then you weren’t, and I couldn’t fucking _find you._ ”

His eyes glitter. With a lurch, James realizes it’s not anger fueling Steve’s rant. It’s guilt. He reaches out because old habits die even harder than he does.

“Stevie--”

“I looked, Buck. I’ve been looking. I tried so hard--”

Steve’s voice breaks, and he bends his head down.

“I didn’t want to be found,” says James. His hand hovers over Steve’s head, unsure of his welcome.

“I should’ve looked sooner,” Steve answers. “Before...everything. I should have known--”

Something twists in James’s chest, cracks open. His fingers drop and comb through Steve’s hair.

“No,” he says, quiet but firm. “I knew the risks, and you had a job to do. This ain’t your fault, Stevie.”

He doesn't argue, but the set of his shoulders says he doesn’t believe the words. He cries the way he always has, like he has a grudge against the tears. James strokes his head and falls asleep with his fingers still tangled in Steve's hair.

 

Sophie finds them like that, later, and stands in the doorway for a moment before going quietly away.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie has a question. Steve remembers he can talk to his wife. The author's favorite trope is self-sacrificing idiots in love.

* * *

Steve leaned his head against his door as it scanned his handprint. Sophia had asked him once, in a fit of annoyance, why emotions had to be so exhausting. He hadn’t really understood what she meant until now.

Sophia. God, she deserved better than what he’d been able to give her lately. She said she knew what she had signed up for when she married him, but this year he’d been worse than ever.

But Bucky was home now, Bucky was getting better, and HYDRA was on the run, and now maybe he could eke out some time to be half the husband she deserved.

The door swung open and he caught himself before he fell into their apartment. Sophia sat curled up on the couch, staring into the middle distance. She was eerily similar to Tony, sometimes, but where Tony thought best with his hands busy, she thought best in stillness. She’d sit for hours, turning something over, looking for the one place to tap so it would all settle into place, or the one thread to pull so it would all fall apart.

She turned to him as he walked in, the vacant expression fading and replaced by something solemn and unreadable.

“When were you going to tell me you're in love with him?”

He blinked.

“I’m not.”

His wife gave him the look she usually saved for when he tried to convince her whatever stupid stunt he had pulled wasn’t _that_ dangerous.

“I love him, sure, but not like that.”

Loving Bucky was muscle memory, like holding his breath underwater, like bracing for the impact of catching his shield. Being in love with Bucky was something that had faded a long time ago. But he had made a promise never to lie to her long before he said his wedding vows.

“Not anymore, anyway,” he said.

She said nothing. He sat down next to her, rubbed a hand over his face.

“We were kids. He moved on and I accepted it, and it was all years ago anyway. It doesn't matter now.”

Her fingers plucked at a throw pillow, rolling stray fibers into a little ball.

“He's your ex, and you spent the last year tearing the world apart to find him, and it doesn’t matter now?"

She didn’t sound mad. She didn’t sound anything. But she didn't look at him, and he could feel himself getting defensive.

“I spent the last year looking for him because he's my best friend, and a prisoner of war, and held captive by an evil organization trying to kill my friends and take over the world, not because I'm still harboring tender feelings after eighty goddamn years.”

“I’m not arguing with the necessity of finding him,” said Sophia. “But he’s your best friend, and you’ve known him since childhood, and you’ve fought together, and loved together, long before I even existed. And now he's back.”

 _Pluck, pluck, pluck_ went Sophia’s fingers. Steve frowned.

“It’s been the better part of a century. Not counting when I was in the ice, it’s still been years. And it doesn’t matter what feelings I had once, I’ve made my choices.”

She looked up at him finally.

“Yeah, but you made those choices before all...this. Arguably, he has a better claim on you than I do.  Can you blame me for being a little...”

Her fingers fluttered through the air. He could almost hear her thoughts, none of them harboring any kindness towards herself. Here he was, swearing to himself to be a better husband, and he’d left her to stew in her insecurities for days.

He captured her hand, pressing it between his.

“Pretty sure I’m the one who gets to decide who has a claim on me,” he said. “And I know for damn sure it’s you. It’s been you since that terrible Christmas party.”

He looked up to meet her eyes, still veiled with doubt.

“Sophia. I have felt even a fraction of what I feel for you for only two other people in my life. I am not going to give you up because someone I used to have feelings for is in our medbay. The only way I’ll ever give you up is if you ask me to, and then I’ll argue with you about it for a good long time.”

He reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, stroke his thumb across her cheek.

“I choose you. I will keep on choosing you. Every day.”

She shut her eyes for a long moment, but when they opened, she was behind them again.

“Sorry,” she said. He pulled her close, tucking his arm around her shoulders.

“No need to be,” he answered. “I should have told you. But. Y’know.”

“Decades of internalized societal homophobia, and years of repressed grief?”

A quick smile flashed across his face.

“Yeah, probably. Also, it’s not just about me. It wouldn’t have been fair to him, to tell people.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I get it. But I’m not people.”

He nodded. “You’re right.”

She turned to him.

“Tell me everything.”

 

* * *

 

The first time Steve kissed Bucky he was twelve and Bucky had just turned thirteen. He was gangly in the way of boys just starting to grow, and had spots, and had just been rebuffed by the girl he’d been pining after since school had started back in September.

They were on the fire escape. Steve’s mother had left for her night shift, otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to hang out on the rusty thing. Sarah Rogers worried about tetanus. Sarah Rogers worried about a lot of things.

“Ain’t nobody ever gonna wanna kiss me,” said Bucky, morose as only a thirteen year old could be. He took a swig from the Coke they were sharing. Steve took the bottle.

“I would,” he said, taking a drink. “Y’know, if I was a girl.”

Steve would kiss Bucky even if neither of them were girls. Steve would do anything for Bucky. Bucky scoffed.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would!” said Steve. Bucky hadn’t figured out that telling him he wouldn’t do something was the best way to get him to do it. Or maybe Steve hadn’t figured out that Bucky telling him not to do something was a sure sign Bucky actually wanted that thing to happen.

Bucky turned to him, cocking an eyebrow in a way that will have girls flocking to him in five years. Steve got that pull he feels when Bucky looks at him, the pull he’s always felt, the one that’s been feeling different lately.

“Oh yeah?” said Bucky, and Steve knew the next words out his mouth were going to be “prove it,” and he never could turn away from a dare.

He darted in and pressed his lips to Bucky’s. It was more of a peck than anything, too fast to even be awkward, but it tasted like Coca-Cola and it was the best thing Steve thought he’d ever done.

Steve settled back into his spot and took another swig.

“Oh,” said Bucky.

“Told ya,” said Steve.

Bucky took the bottle from him.

“Quit drinkin’ all the Coke.”

  


The first time Bucky kissed Steve, they were both fifteen. Bucky had taken up boxing. The joke was that he did it so he could look after his pocket size companion, but in truth Bucky got into least as many fights as Steve did. Neither of them took well to bullies, Bucky was just better at it.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise when Bucky came stumbling into the Rogers apartment, eyes glittering with victory but dazed with a few too many hits to the head. Steve hadn’t been at school that day, recovering from some illness or other, or he would have the same look.

Sarah was working swing shifts these days, but Bucky had had a key for years. He was over all the time anyway, and someone needed to look after Steve when he was sick and Sarah was at work.

So when Bucky came in, scuffed and bleeding, a bruise starting to color high on his cheekbone, Steve just sighed and went to get the anti-septic.

When he came back out, Bucky was drying his hands and whistling.

“Sit down,” Steve said. Bucky pulled a face, but sat. Steve perched on the coffee table and inspected his patient. The damage wasn’t so bad, most of the blood coming from a small cut near his temple.

“Bastard was wearing a ring,” said Bucky. “But I put him down.” He hissed in through his teeth as Steve cleaned the cut.

“Who was it this time?”

“Sammy Lewis’s brother.”

“Jesus, Buck, he’s gotta have five years and fifty pounds on you.”

“He was saying some shit about how Germany has the right idea. Couldn’t let that stand. He can’t fight worth a damn anyway.”

Steve stuck some plaster over the cut.

“Got some good shots in for someone who can’t fight.”

“Even idiots get lucky sometimes,” said Bucky. He grinned. “I mean, look at me, I got you.”

Steve stuck his fingers under Bucky’s chin, tilting his face towards the light.

“This one’s gonna be a doozy, Buck.”

“Better me than you,” he answered. He was still smiling, blue eyes bright even in the fading afternoon sun. Steve wanted to sketch him like this, bruised and triumphant and full of good intentions.

“It’s not gonna heal faster just cuz you’re staring at it,” said Bucky.

“What do you want me to do, kiss it better?” Steve asked. It was meaningless, a piece of sarcasm that was second nature to the both of them, but Bucky tilted his head down to hold Steve’s gaze.

“I want a lot of things,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss Steve full on the mouth.

It was awkward, this time, because Steve wasn’t expecting it, and also didn’t know what he was doing. But his lips parted slightly in surprise, and Bucky’s found an angle that they fit together and then it wasn’t awkward at all.

They broke apart when Bucky could tell Steve was getting winded.

“Bucky...” Steve’s words had fled with his breath.

“I want you,” Bucky answered. “I figured you oughta know. But if you don’t, we can just go back to the way it was, you don’t have to—“

Steve’s hand had slipped during the kiss, his slim fingers curling around Bucky’s neck. He tightened his grasp just a bit, enough to get his friend’s attention and stop his gabbling. Bucky made little noise that Steve felt all the way down to his bones.

“Bucky?” said Steve. “Shut up.”

And then he kissed Bucky for the second time.

They ended up with Steve straddling Bucky on the couch, one hand tangled in his friend’s hair and the other fisted in his shirt. Bucky held Steve close and made sounds that Steve knew would keep him up nights.

They only stopped when a timer went off in the kitchen, and Steve went to take the casserole his mother left out of the oven.

They ate standing, the newness of whatever this was leaving them unable to sit still.

“We can’t let anybody know,” said Steve.

“Yeah,” said Bucky. They both knew what the world was like for men who liked men, especially if they looked like Steve. “But we’re together all the time anyway. So if we don’t act any different...”

Steve started washing their plates, and Bucky picked up a towel.

“And I’m not going to stop you from seeing girls,” said Steve. “It’s probably better if you do, anyhow.”

“Not gonna stop you either,” said Bucky with a cheeky look. Steve shot him an exasperated one in return. There were no girls. There had never been any girls.

“Do you even like girls?” Bucky asked now, putting the plates away. Steve leaned on the counter.

“I guess,” he answered. “If any of them ever liked me.”

He liked girls, in theory, as intrigued by their smiles and summer dresses as any boy, he thought. But the only person that had ever really made him feel anything was Bucky. And oh God, did Bucky make him feel things.

“Ma’s got a double shift tonight,” he said.

“Is that a fact?” Bucky’s cocky smile was back as he walked over to stand in front of Steve. Steve hooked a finger through a belt loop and pulled him closer.

“And you got hit in the head, so I figure someone needs to keep an eye on you.”

“Keep something on me, anyway,” said Bucky, bending down. Steve laughed.

“You’re terrible.”

“You like me anyway,” said Bucky. Steve just kissed him and figured that would be a good enough answer.

 

No one noticed. They lived in each other’s pockets already. Bucky charmed and flirted and danced his way through all the girls they knew. Steve stayed on the sidelines, making dry comments no one but Bucky heard. Steve joined political organizations and drew biting satirical cartoons. Bucky followed him to meetings and rallies and fight after fight after fight.

Bucky met girls, but never seemed to find the right one. Steve met girls, but never felt like he had enough to offer. What girl would want a guy who would probably be dead next winter anyway?

“You gonna go with her?” Steve asked once, the May they were going to graduate from high school. They were in bed, drowsy with the spring warmth and the nearness of each other. Steve combed his fingers through Bucky’s hair.

Bucky’s girlfriend was moving out to California to try and be in the pictures. Her uncle had promised her work at a telephone company, had promised Bucky work too, if they were engaged.

“Nah. Ma’s set on me going to college. Besides,” he said, turning his head to look up at Steve, “I could never leave you.”

His easy honesty robbed Steve of speech, but Bucky was foremost a little shit, so he followed up with “You’d get beaten to a pulp and your ma would never forgive me.”

 

So they came back to each other, every time, never drifting too far away. When Steve’s mother died they drifted close, because no matter how prideful Steve was, it was hard on him. They stayed close because work was hard to find, and Bucky moved in so they could make ends meet.

Bucky went out a lot, and stayed out sometimes, but he never brought girls home. Steve thought he might have had something with a girl he met at a socialist rally, but she left to follow in the footsteps of Dorothea Lange before anything came of it. Bucky dragged Steve on double dates after she left, but nothing ever came of those either. Steve thought he had everything he needed anyway.

They were friends, and they fooled around, and they got by.

Once, flushed and daring and already more than a little ossified, they went to a fairy bar.

The drinks were bad, but the music was good, and there were men dancing with each other and no one cared. Bucky never could sit still when there was dancing to be had, so soon Steve was dancing too. For a half deaf asthmatic, he wasn’t so bad, especially if Bucky was leading. Especially if Bucky was looking at him the way he was now, and Steve could just about drown in those deep blue eyes.

They went back, when they could, for a while, until someone threw a lit bottle full of kerosene through a window on a Saturday night and the building went up.

They both tried to help, but Steve’s lungs were shit, and eventually someone dragged him across the street and left him there. The world was smoke and yelling, and he didn’t know where Bucky was, and he couldn’t catch his breath.

Bucky found him as the firefighters arrived. In the flickering light, Bucky was white and ash smeared. His fingers dug into Steve’s thin shoulders.

“Jesus, I thought...are you alright?”

Steve gave something between a shrug and a nod and then coughed. Bucky put a hand on his chest.

“Just breathe. Nice and slow.”

They stayed like that, Bucky kneeling before him, waiting for his lungs to cooperate. The firefighters soaked the buildings next door and watched the bar burn.

“Fucking faggots,” said one, glaring sidelong at the people scattered along the street. One of the regulars was trying to comfort the shaking bartender.

“Best thing to happen to this street,” said another. Steve heard the sound of more sirens coming closer.

“Finally,” said the first. “Maybe the cops’ll take them all away.”

Bucky put an arm around Steve and hoisted him to his feet.

“C’mon, we gotta get out of here,” he muttered. Steve could hardly hear him, even on his good side, but he could feel Bucky’s anxiety, the edge of the adrenaline crash.

The walk home stretched long, but they got there. Bucky got Steve his inhaler and cleaned them both up. Steve spent the night coughing, and Bucky spent it worried.

The next morning, the paper reported a mysterious fire at a den of iniquity. Three bodies were found.    

“Fuck,” Steve whispered.

“It could have been us,” said Bucky. _It could have been you_ , hung the unspoken meaning.

Steve glanced up at him. He hadn’t slept and he looked it, unshaven and pale and serious. He was cleaning his shoes, buffing away the mud and ash.

“We can’t keep doing this,” he said. He met Steve’s eyes, the memory of the smoke and the hard faced firefighters heavy in the air between them.

Steve’s fingers clenched, crumpling the paper. He’d known this couldn’t last, he’d known Bucky would find a girl and settle down, he’d known he wasn’t a good long term bet. They never made any promises beyond friendship. They’d never talked of love. Steve relaxed his fingers, cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” he said. “Guess not.”

Bucky nodded and went back to his shoes. Steve went back to the paper and blamed the ache in his chest on the smoke.

 

They stayed close, if not as close. Bucky stuck to girls and Steve stuck to work. He still ached, sometimes, and sometimes, when he caught Bucky looking at him, he thought that Bucky ached too.

And then the war happened. Bucky shipped out and Steve danced for the war bonds organ grinder. Bucky got captured and Steve rescued him. Bucky still looked at him, sometimes, but Steve’s mind was busy and his heart slowly filling up with a British accent and a take no shit attitude.

So the next time Bucky kissed Steve was something of a surprise.

They were behind enemy lines, in the kind of deep forest all sane operations tried to avoid. But they weren’t sane, they were loaded with TNT and the approximate coordinates of a HYDRA base.

It went swift and smooth. His team might have been reckless idiots, but they were professional reckless idiots. And as Monty pointed out, at least the zealots’ policy of death before dishonor made the cleanup easy.

They came and went and holed up somewhere a few miles away to wait for extraction. The boys broke out the inevitable pack of cards, and Bucky wandered off.

Bucky had a habit of wandering off. He never went far, but he went on ahead, or dropped behind, climbed trees and scaled cliffs. He was fast and quiet, with an almost uncanny gift for scenting trouble. He said that it was because he spent so long looking after Steve, and they all laughed, because it was easier than thinking about the truth.

The Germans had done something to him in that labor camp. Steve didn’t know what they’d done, but he could hazard a guess. Bucky had been a good sniper before, but now he never seemed to miss. Sometimes he cocked his head and slipped away, responding to a noise not even Steve had heard. Steve could do impossible things. Bucky could do things just this side of impossible.

So when Bucky wandered off, Steve mostly let him. Except when he got like this, when his eyes were distant, when he moved like his skin fit him wrong and he couldn’t sit still.

Steve followed the _thunk_ of metal hitting wood as Bucky tossed his knives one by one into a tree.

“You gonna talk about it?” he asked. They’d known each other too long to even pretend dissimulation.

“No.”

They’d been doing experiments, at the HYDRA base. The evidence wasn’t alive anymore, by the time the unit got there, so they were at least spared the horrible necessity of mercy killing. But it was still hard for any of them to stomach.

Bucky retrieved his knives, came back to throw them again. It was too dark to throw with accuracy, but that didn’t stop Steve from seeing each blade sink in precisely where Bucky meant it.

“Alright,” he answered.

“Go get some sleep, Steve,” said Bucky, without turning. _Thunk_ went a knife.

“You need it more than I do,” said Steve.

“It ain’t sleep I need.” A mutter so quiet Steve almost didn’t hear it, but he could taste the bitterness.

“What is it then?” he asked, moving toward his friend. “C’mon, Buck, you know I’m here for you--”

Bucky whirled on his heels, his hands clenched at his sides.

“I--I need--I just--”

And then he was kissing Steve, kissing him like he was food and Bucky was starving, like he was air and Bucky was drowning.

And Steve kissed him back.

They fit differently now. Steve was taller and his hands larger, but he discovered that Bucky felt the same beneath them. Bucky’s hands felt different, though, cool against his always warm skin, as they fumbled urgently at each other. It was fast and quiet, muffled gasps and the shuffling of disturbed leaves.

When they were done, Bucky leaned his head down against Steve’s chest. Steve wrapped an arm around his waist, the other hand cupping Bucky’s neck the way he always liked.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky murmured.

“Don’t be,” Steve answered. “Whatever you need.”

So Bucky came to him, when his head was wrong and his skin too tight, and Steve very carefully took him apart and equally carefully put him back together.

He knew he should have felt guilty, because whatever was growing between him and Peggy felt real, felt right. But it was Bucky. He could spin a metaphor about halves and wholes, about stars and orbits, but it reduced down to that: It was Bucky, and Bucky needed him.

The last time Steve kissed Bucky wasn’t really anything. They had had a few days of R&R, but they were about to go out again. The rest of the Howlies were out making poor choices somewhere, involving women or beer or cards or maybe all three, but Bucky had a look Steve had come to recognize. So he made his excuses and stayed behind.

Bucky came to his room not much later, and Steve’s deft fingers made him forget about everything but the sensation of skin on skin and Steve’s own name. They slept for a few hours, tangled up together in the dark. Bucky tried to slip out the same way he came in, but Steve caught his wrist.

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” he said. Bucky snorted.

“Not like I can stay the night.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

It was an old argument that wasn’t even an argument. Steve knew what the field was doing to his friend, knew that if he wanted, there would be an honorable discharge or a position training recruits or an extra long leave, with no questions asked.

“You’re still too dumb to run away from a fight, so I ain’t leaving.”

“Still,” Steve said. “Offer’s open.” He pulled Bucky close and kissed him, more affection than heat.

“Yeah, sure,” said Bucky, and ducked out the door.

The next morning, they started out on an op to retrieve a HYDRA scientist off a train.

And then there was the Red Skull, and a plane with a bomb, and not enough time, and ice, and the world knew the rest.

 

* * *

 

“Bucky and I...he wouldn’t have wanted whatever we were, once we were back in the world,” Steve said. “I would have married Peg, if she’d have me. If we’d had more time. I was falling for her. She would have run SHIELD and I would have...I don’t know. Gone into politics, probably. I would have hated the ‘50s.”

Sophie had taken his hand, running her slender fingers over the calluses, interweaving their fingers.

“But it didn’t work out that way. And now there’s you,” he finished, looking up at her. “And nothing’s going to change that.”

He knew it was different now, for men who loved men, but that didn’t stop the anxiety of telling this story to someone. Sophie just leaned into him, laid her head in his lap.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said. Before she met her husband, Sophie hadn’t known that someone could be a refugee from a time rather than a place. That the past could be another country, a homeland beloved and impossible to return to. He spoke of it so rarely, but with such wistfulness.

“When I woke up, the story was already fixed in everyone’s head, you know?” Steve said. “No one’s really interested in changing it."

“It’s your story,” she answered. “You have a right to change it. If you want to. You know we’d all support you. And it would mean a lot to the queer community, I think, to count you among them.”

Steve shrugged.

“Maybe. But it’s still not just my story, and I don’t want to drag Bucky into anything. Especially now. Plus...interviews. You know how well those go.”

The older Steve got, the less he was able to maintain the carefully curated wholesome image he’d hidden behind in the ‘40s. In his last interview, he’d explained why socialism made the most sense as an economic model and the conservative media had called him a communist for weeks.

“Oh, I know,” Sophie said. She had that half smile she got when she was contemplating making trouble. “Imagine it though. ‘Captain America: Queer Icon.’ Think of the conniption fits the Republicans would have.”

Steve snorted.

“I can see the headlines now,” she continued. “Cap stuns the world as he admits past love affair!”

“Oh god, please no,” he groaned.

“America’s favorite son proclaims ‘It’s stars AND stripes!’”

He shook his head at her.

“You’re terrible.”

She grinned up at him.

“You love me.”

“Yeah,” said Steve, bending to kiss her. “I really do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are the purest form of love.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky meets the gang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates might be sparse for a while, I'm having trouble wrangling the pacing. But I have not abandoned my babies, I shall return!

* * *

James wakes up again. The light has shifted, and Steve is gone, but he hears the reassuring small noises of a living building around him. Footsteps approach and he looks to the door to see a slightly disheveled man knock on the doorframe.

“Hi,” he says. “May I come in?”

James’s ability to stop him right now is on par with his ability to fly, but he appreciates the courtesy.

“Sure,” he says.

The man enters. He’s carrying a cup full of something. It has a straw.

“We’re not sure how you’d be feeling about food, but the sooner we can get some real calories in you the better, so I brought this if you’re up for it.”

James eyes the cup.

“It’s not pink, is it?”

“I see you encountered that particular disaster,” the man answers with a small grin. “I promise this is a totally normal nutritional supplement, and not an experiment cooked up by our resident mad scientist.”

James takes the cup. It tastes like fake vanilla, and drinking leaves him out of breath.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“Around 2 in the afternoon.”

James considers this.

“What day is it?”

The man opens his mouth to answer, and then looks flummoxed.

“I don’t actually know. You’ve been in the Tower for about a week, if that helps.” He pauses. “I’m Bruce, by the way. Bruce Banner. I’m on your...care team? I guess?”

“James,” he answers. He figures he better establish this before Steve gets everyone to call him Bucky. “I thought you had PhDs, not MDs.”

“If my reputation precedes me, then you probably know I’m, ah, something of a self-educated expert on enhanced human physiology,” Bruce answers. He points behind him with a thumb. “She’s the MD.”

A small brown-skinned woman with a buzz cut walks into the room.

“Good, you’re awake,” she says. “Tell me--”

“James, this is Dr. Divya Chu,” Bruce cuts in. “She’s also an expert on metahuman physiology. Divya, this is James.”

Divya rolls her eyes.

“Good afternoon, James,” she says, with exaggerated politeness. “May I ask how you are feeling?”

James runs a mental check.

“Like shit,” he answers. The doctor cackles in a way eerily reminiscent of Louisa and whips out a stethoscope.

“I see you two will get along like a house on fire,” mutters Bruce.

“What’s on fire?” Steve’s voice comes from behind Bruce, followed shortly by the man himself. He stops. “Oh god, they’ve met.”

Divya casually flips both men the bird, and James’ laugh quickly turns into a wracking cough. Steve rushes around to hover protectively over him, one hand rubbing between his shoulder blades. James leans into it and feels weak in every way possible.

“Give it to me straight, Doc,” he says when he gets his breath back. “Will I make it to Christmas?”

“Eh, you’re not coughing up blood, you’re probably alright,” she answers. She pokes a few buttons on one of the machines he’s hooked up to.

“You will be fine,” says Bruce. “This is just the tail end of the pneumonia. Everything else seems to be working again.”

“Everything else?” He didn’t think he could even get pneumonia. He didn’t think he could get anything.

“The withdrawal from the cocktail of exciting and unethical pharmaceuticals you were on triggered a cascade failure of every one of your body’s systems,” says Divya. “But the pneumonia seems to have been exacerbated by chronic stress and exhaustion, so it’s taking a little longer.”

James thinks over the last few months. Chronic stress and exhaustion seem fair descriptors. Another question occurs to him.

“What’s my brain look like?”

“Ooo, good question,” says Divya. “Jarvis?”

“I don’t think--” begins Steve.

“Bringing up the latest scans,” says a voice from nowhere. James feels Steve tense behind him, and realizes he’s recoiled into the larger man.

“What kind of scifi bullshit--” he starts, but trails into a cough as his heart gives a feeble adrenaline fueled lurch.

Steve’s hand comes to rest on the back of his neck, warm and comforting.

“Can we maybe not give him another heart attack?” asks Steve, as Bruce and Divya makes apologetic faces.

“No, it’s alright. Just...gimme a sec.”

He focuses on his breathing, anchoring himself to the soothing pressure of Steve’s fingers.

“Jarvis is an artificial intelligence who runs most of the Tower,” says Steve. “He’s pretty much everywhere in here.”

“I apologize for startling you, Sergeant Barnes,” comes the voice again. It sounds like the butler from a BBC period drama. “It is a pleasure to meet you. If there is anything you require, please let me know.”

“Thank you,” says James, because he was raised to be polite. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

“Here are the scans, Dr. Chu,” says the robot butler. Holograms shimmer into existence and James stares.

“I know,” murmurs Steve. “The future is wild.”

“This is your brain,” says Divya, gesturing. He looks at the images hanging in the air. Some of them have colors.

“I have no idea what any of this means,” he says.

“It’s actually in pretty good shape, considering what we know from those files,” says Divya.

“We found the stuff you left with Louisa,” says Steve. “We went through it.”

James nods, and tries not to think about how everyone here knows everything that happened to him. Goddammit, he was supposed to be dead when it all shook out.

“There’s evidence of trauma and its effects,” continues Divya. “I’m not a psychologist, but I’d hazard that you have some related mental illness.”

James snorts. “You could say that. How do the memory bits look?”

“Uh. Fine? More or less? Should they not?”

“I don’t remember the last seventy years, so you tell me.”

Steve’s hand stills on the back of his neck.

“None of it?”

“Very nearly,” James says. “There’s some time at the...the beginning. And then there’s about a year ago. In between is...”

_The smell of black tea. Cold. Pain. Flashes of light and the sound of guns. Blue eyes so close to familiar._

James shakes his head, as much as to dislodge the echoes as to indicate a negative.

“Huh,” says Divya. She pokes as the holograms.

“Any problems with memory formation or retention since a year ago?” asks Bruce.

“Not really,” James answers. His HYDRA killing roadtrip is kind of a blur, but that’s intentional. If he really wanted, his alter ego would let him in.

“Any loss of memories from before your imprisonment?” asks Divya.

“No,” says James. “They’re there.”

They’re shiny and sharp and sparkling, and he tries not to think about them, but they’re definitely still there.

“I refuse to believe that the memory modification they were attempting had enough finesse to target specific memories,” says Divya. “That thing was the equivalent of a baseball bat.”

“The chair?” says James. “That was mostly for compliance. At least at first.”

Steve’s hand tightens briefly. James almost reaches up to comfort him, but Steve lets go before he can.

“There’s nothing physical I can see,” says Bruce, with Divya nodding in frustrated agreement. “If there’s something you can think of that’s not in the files...Anything you can tell us will help us help you, but we understand if it’s too--"

“They didn’t let me sleep,” says James. It’s not a memory so much as a sudden knowledge surfacing, a bubble from some black abyss. The room stares at him.

“They’d wipe me and put me away, but I didn’t sleep unless the missions ran for too long. I didn’t sleep for seventy years.”

“Well, that’s horrifying,” says Divya.

“That would do it, though,” says Bruce. “Broadly speaking, memories are shifted from short term to long term during sleep. If the short term memories were erased regularly, and you didn’t sleep, you never would have formed long term memories.”

That’s what the flashes are, he realizes, scraps his brain managed save from the machine and the general horror. But that’s all they are, all that’s there. Scraps. He must have looked stricken because Steve’s firm, gentle hands are back.

“Stay with me, Buck,” he says. “I’m right here.”

“No, I’m alright,” James says. He’ll never remember those years. It’s a curious sensation, relief mingled with loss. But he is alright, more or less. He turns to look up at Steve.

“At least now I can stop trying to find something that isn’t there.”

Divya dismisses the holograms with a flick of her wrist.

“I don’t know about y’all, but I’m all horrible revelation’d out. James, you’re healing fine, I’m keeping you for a few more days for observation and to make sure you don’t do anything stupid. If you’re anything like the American Idiot here, that’s a real risk.”

Steve starts to protest, but Divya points at him.

“Don’t sass me, Rogers, I’ve seen the footage. James, stay in bed. I’m going to get coffee.”

“I’ll leave you to rest, if you don’t need anything else,” says Bruce. “Please don’t hesitate to ask Jarvis to find any of us if you do need something.”

He exchanges a nod with Steve and follows Divya. Steve sits on a couch next to the bed. James has a feeling he’s spent a lot of time on that couch.

“You don’t gotta stay,” he says, settling back into his pillows. He pulls the blanket up, and realizes it’s the one from Louisa’s.

“Got nowhere else to be,” Steve answers. “Besides, I’ve got a book.”

A ritual call and response almost as old as their arguments, but it used to be Steve in the bed and James next to it. A small smile slides across James’s face.

“I’ll stay until you fall asleep,” says Steve.

James is already drifting off.

“Thanks, Stevie.”

“Anytime, jerk.”

* * *

 

The next few days people pop in and out of James’s room so much he feels like an exhibit. Divya and Bruce have jobs to do--or at least Divya does. James isn’t so sure what Bruce actually does besides bring him food and act as Divya’s Beside Manner Translator. But he doesn’t mind them. Steve is there as much as he can be, but James picks up that his friend is dealing with the fallout of the HYDRA files.

He meets Thor first, when the Asgardian comes in looking for Steve. Steve has been working from the couch, the furrow between his brows deepening with every passing minute. James watches his face. The furrow will spill out into an annoyed mutter in five...four...three...

A knock interrupts his countdown, and they both look up. A man even larger and blonder and more affable looking than Steve stands in the doorway.

“Thor!” says Steve, the furrow melting into a pleased but confused expression James thinks would look at home on a Labrador. “Bucky, this Thor.”

Thor’s gaze sweeps the room and settles on him. His eyes are very old and James feels suddenly very small.

“James,” he says with a friendly nod. “Steve has spoken of you often. I am glad to see you recovering.”

“Thanks,” says James. He has no idea what to say to a god. “Nice to meet you.”

“I look forward to getting to know you,” says Thor in return. “But right now I am tasked to ‘make Steve go outside before he turns into nothing but a bitter troll yelling at politicians on Twitter.’”

Steve casts a rueful eye at his laptop.

“Tony?”

“I believe he has an alert for when your Twitter writings become too irate,” Thor answers.

“I don’t know if--” starts Steve, glancing at James. James rolls his eyes.

“Jesus. Go away, Steve. Bring me back tacos or something.”

“If you’re sure--”

The Asgardian claps Steve on the back.

“You cannot deny the request of an injured warrior! We will search the food trucks for the finest tacos.”

Thor catches James’s eye, and beneath the antiquated cadence and general surfer bro aura, James sees a deep spark of humor that reminds him of Zareen. He gives Thor a nod of thanks as Steve is ushered gently but firmly from the room. Thor gives him a wink.

 

His first actual visitor, later, is Leif, who hops up on James’s bed and stares at him.

“He wanted to check on you,” says Sophie. “I thought I should tag along so it’s not just like, surprise dog.”

Leif, apparently satisfied with his inspection, flops down and demands petting.

“Also, I brought this,” she says, handing him a cup. A welcome scent wafts up to him and he wants to stick his entire face in it. He takes a sip. There’s too much milk and not enough sugar but he doesn’t care.

“You’re an absolute peach,” he says. She sits down on the couch.

“So if I had to guess, I’d say you’re about half a day away from gnawing off your own arm out of boredom.”

James, who spent a good part of the morning inventing fantasy continents from the wall texture, cracks half a grin.

“That obvious?”

She waves a hand. “No, I just have experience.”

A memory surfaces from the time spent obsessively researching after he woke up.

“You run that program to get books and stuff to kids in hospitals, don’t you?”

“Among other things,” she says. “Anyway, I brought you this.”

She pulls a phone and tablet out of her bag, and holds them out to him. They’re sleek and black and look frighteningly expensive.

“I have--” he starts, but he’s already reaching for the shiny new things.

“What you have, frankly, are security risks. Also these are connected to Jarvis, and to Minerva, which is the library. I don’t know if you’re a reader, but we have a pretty good video streaming service too, and audiobooks, and stuff.”

James taps through the interface.

“You got _Harry Potter_?”

Sophie grins.

“Oh we’ve got alllll the Harry Potter.”

By the time she leaves, she’s somehow wrangled his favorite books out of him, and he has a list of recommendations a mile long. Sophie’s delight in another reader is boundless.

“If you want,” she says, as she leaves, “I have kind of a list I developed for Steve to get him up caught up to the 21st century. Obviously right now you should focus on healing, but it’s there. If you want it.”

She’s bright and kind and pretty and thoughtful and everything Steve deserves. If he were in anything but the pathetic shape he’s in, he might hate her. But at this point he’s grateful for anyone’s kindness.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’d be good.”

She smiles at him, and he sinks back into the bed and lets Jim Dale read to him about The Boy Who Lived until he falls asleep.

Later, when Bruce comes to collect his lunch tray, a red-headed woman follows him halfway into the room. Her eyes are too sharp for her placid expression. Behind her, a muscular man with a lived in kind of face kicks a heel up and leans against the wall.

“James, this is Clint and Natasha,” says Bruce. “They’re, uh, Avengers.”

They’re goddamn dangerous spies is what they are. Even before he got his brain back, he knew about the Black Widow. He eyes her.

“You’re looking well,” says Natasha. “Comparatively.”

“Compared to a corpse? Probably,” he answers. She permits a small smile to cross her face. It makes her look charming and relatable and James does not trust it an inch.

“Everyone was pretty worried. It’s good to see you on the mend.”

James glances at Clint. He does not look like he gave a single shit about James’s welfare.

“I’m grateful for the care,” says James. Their studied nonchalance is freaking him out. “So what can I do for SHIELD’s most elite field team?”

“Just came to introduce ourselves,” says Clint, in English, and it’s only then James realizes the Widow  was speaking Russian. Damn his misfiring brain.

Natasha steps a little further into the room.

“Steve says you don’t remember much.” It’s English, now. Her eyes search his face, looking for something. What, he doesn’t know.

“Not a lot,” says James. “So if we’ve met before, I’m sorry, I don’t—“

“Oh, you shot me once,” she says. “But I won’t hold it against you.”

“Thanks?” he answers. He’s spent the last six months interrogating Nazis and trying not to get killed, and this is still the most awkward and weirdly fraught conversation he can remember having this century.

“Anyway, we’ll let you rest,” says Natasha. “It’s good to meet you.”

“Yeah,” he says. “You too.”

Clint gives him a nod. They leave.

James pulls out his new phone.

_your friends are weird_

Steve: _Which friends?_

Steve: _I mean, yeah, but_

James scrolls around until he finds spider and bird emojis.

Steve: _Oh_

Steve: _You have NO idea._

 

Meeting Natasha and Clint, awkwardness notwithstanding, means there’s only one of Steve’s new team he hasn’t met. On the one hand, he’s kind of relieved that Howard’s kid hasn’t come to see him, because he might not remember anything, but he knows what he did. On the other hand, Stark does own the building and is financing his medical care, and he feels like he should at least try to say thank you.

So he dithers about it for a day or so until Jarvis does the robot equivalent of clearing his throat and says “James?”

“Yeah?” He had asked Jarvis to call him James because getting called Sergeant Barnes makes him feel like he should be saluting someone.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but Mr. Stark is wondering if he could stop in.”

“When?”

“Whenever it is convenient.”

James lets out a breath. Probably better to just get it over with. At least he managed to bathe today, so he doesn’t look like half dead weasel.

“Yeah, alright,” he answers. “Whenever. Got nothing else going on.”

Stark wanders in a suspiciously short time later. He’s tossing a rubber ball from hand to hand and despite his sharp suit, he looks as awkward as James feels. A wary silence ensues while they look each other over.

“So you’re the guy who killed my parents,” Stark says, finally.

“So I’ve been told,” James answers. They examine each other some more, like two dogs in junkyard. He opens his mouth to...apologize? Explain? But Stark jerks his chin at James’s arm.

“You want a new one?”

James stares at him.

“I murdered your parents and now you’re offering to make me a new arm?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.” Stark’s eyes flit around the room.

“Why don’t you want to kill me right now?”

“Generally I try not to kill people unless they’re actively trying to kill me. Anymore.”

James continues staring. Stark’s gaze catches on him.

“I won’t deny that I had a few murderous impulses, but I’m trying to--Look, it’s easier to just--here. J, be me for a minute.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Stark’s voice suddenly emanates from the walls.

“He killed my parents!”

Jarvis’s imitation of Stark is exactly what Stark doing an imitation of himself would sound like--just a hair too arrogant and a tad too petulant, a preemptive self-deprecation that would make anyone criticizing him look like an asshole. James realizes he’s in the presence of a master.

“He wasn’t acting under his own power. He was held captive, tortured and brainwashed.”

“I was kidnapped and tortured, and I didn’t give in.”

“You were a hostage for two weeks, and you weren’t even alone. Barnes was hostage for seventy goddamn years, and assholes played Operation with his brain.”

“But he killed my parents!” The AI’s imitation is getting increasingly whiny.

“And you’re responsible for the deaths of millions, but you’re getting the opportunity to try and make up for at least some of it, so stop being a whiny little shit and get on with your life.”

Stark turns back to James.

“ _Et fin_.”

James finds that staring is still the most effective expression of his feelings.

“I may be volatile, impulsive, riddled with anxiety, and possibly an alcoholic, but one thing I try to be is fair. You didn’t want to do what you did, and I am trying not to hold it against you. So,” Stark takes a breath. “You want a new arm?”

“Yeah,” says James. “Alright.”

“Cool. Mind if I take a look?”

James shrugs.

“Help yourself.”

Stark scans his arm with a scifi looking gadget and creates a 3d rendering out of the air. James tries not to gawk. Stark pokes at it and mutters, occasionally asking questions about sensors and bio-feedback and strength. He seems to get what he needs, and then looks up.

“Anything you want in the new one?”

James thinks.

“Could it be, like...lighter? This one is really heavy.”

He remembers the first time he tried to stand, after they welded it onto him, how he staggered. The grinding of metal on bone. The way he had to walk until his muscles learned to deal with it, the way everything hurt until his body stopped even registering the pain. Something must show in his face, because Stark’s expression turns from concentrated inquiry to an odd mix of anger and compassion.

“Yeah,” he says. “I can work with that.”

He dismisses his hologram with a flick of his fingers, says “I’ll have something soon. I’ll text you or whatever,” and heads for the door.

“Stark.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Stark pauses for barely a second.

“Tony. Call me Tony.”

And then he’s gone.

James stares into space for a moment before deciding that Starks are still overwhelming, and emotions are too complicated, and he’d rather take another nap instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos feed authors. Well fed authors make write more. Feeeeeed meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James doesn't know what to do with emotions, so he makes food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small update for your patience.

* * *

A few days later, James almost feels like he can breathe normally. Almost.

“Deep breath in,” says Divya, holding a stethoscope to him. He tries and coughs until he sees spots.

“How is he?” Steve asks.

“Getting better, clearly,” he says, when he can talk again. “I can talk for myself, you know. I just can’t breathe.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Yesterday you said you were fine and then passed out trying to walk down the hallway. You’re an unreliable narrator.”

“You’re doing great for someone who ought to be dead,” says Divya. “Just keep taking the antibiotics and you’ll probably be fine in a week or so. But you can take him home for now.” The last sentence she directs at Steve.

“What am I, a stray dog?” He knows he sounds like an asshole, but he can’t seem to help it.

Steve’s face falls and Divya rolls her eyes. 

“I need you to stick around for a while, in case of any complications. Forgive me for thinking you’d prefer somewhere less like a hospital.”

“You don’t have to stay with me, if you don’t want,” says Steve. “There’s some empty suites. I just thought...I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed...”

Steve looks painfully earnest. Divya, who has unerring instinct for avoiding anyone else’s emotions, leaves without even the kindness of a manufactured excuse. James envies her.

“I’m not saying I don’t want to, Steve, I’m just probably not the best roommate, what with...everything.” He pauses. “And anyway, what about your wife?”

“Sophia?” Steve looks surprised. “She’s set up the guest room for you.”

God save him from well-meaning idiots. 

“Steve,” he says with as much patience as he can muster. “Sophie is a wonderful, normal person. I am a supersoldier with night terrors and PTSD. There are so many ways this is a bad idea.”

Steve smiles briefly with private amusement.

“Oh, she can take care of herself,” is all he says. “C’mon Buck. It’ll just be for a few days.”

He should say no. He’s almost certain he could say no, if he wanted to. But Steve is staring at him with that puppy dog look, and it would only be for a little while, and the fact is, he doesn’t want to say no.

“Yeah alright,” he says, and Steve’s smile is like the sun. 

  
  


When they get upstairs, Honey does cartwheels of joy and Sophie takes him on a tour. The place takes up an entire floor, the rooms flowing into each other, and it somehow feels spacious and cozy at the same time. The kitchen is like something out of one of the food shows, at least three walls are lined floor to ceiling in books, and there’s a couch he thinks is bigger than his college bedroom.

Sophie sees him eyeing the books and a dimple appears.

“Help yourself. If there’s anything you want that’s not there, the library probably has it. Fourth floor. I’m there most of the time, but anyone will be able to help you.” 

“Oh sure,  _ he _ can help himself to the books,” comes a voice from the kitchen. Steve, who is still a bottomless pit, is making grilled cheese sandwiches.

“ _ He _ will follow the rules, I’m sure,” Sophie hollers back. 

“Rules?” James asks. 

“If you lose or destroy a book, you replace it, and you do not try to reshelve them yourself. There’s a cart for when you’re done. Please, I beg of you, let me put it back where it goes.”

“I mishelve something one time...” Steve mutters, coming over and handing James a sandwich. He’s not even hungry, but it has avocado in it, and he is weak. He follows Sophie across the living area.

“The guest suite,” she says, opening a door with a flourish. It opens onto a sitting room furnished with a small couch and a mostly empty bookshelf. There’s two doors on the far end. One leads to a bathroom with an absurdly large tub, and the other to a bedroom. His box of stuff sits on a dresser, and his blanket is draped on the edge of the bed. He feels strangely touched.

“When you said she was making up a room...” he mutters to Steve. He might feel moved, but being sardonic comes easier.

“I know,” Steve answers. “You should see the master suite, the closet is bigger than your first apartment. Rich people are weird.”

“I can hear you,” says Sophie from the doorway. “But since Tony was responsible for this, I won’t take offense. James, your rooms are stocked with a few days worth of clothing and whatnot. If you make a list of stuff you want, Jarvis can have it delivered for you. Oh, and that reminds me,” she adds, as he wanders out to the living room again. “Jarvis isn’t in here, so if you need him, you can use your phone or your tablet or whatever.”

“I thought he was everywhere?” James had started to think of the AI as omniscient and omnipresent, if not omnipotent. 

“We have an agreement,” says Sophie. James looks at Steve, but he’s doing his impression of an amiable wall. He senses a history.

“Alright,” he says. 

“I should get back to work,” she says. “If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask. And I’m sure Steve has said, but you are more than welcome to stay as long as you want.”

He looks up, surprised by the sincerity in her voice. He catches something in her eyes before she kisses Steve and leaves. It looks a lot like understanding. 

Steve watches her go with a besotted look, and then turns back to him. 

“Some girl you’ve got there,” James says, to forestall the awkward silence he feels coming. 

“Yeah,” says Steve. The silence builds anyway.

“So...” says James. “You have Food Network?”

 

They watch Iron Chef for awhile. Steve makes faces at the idea of turkey ice cream. James wonders how hard it would be to trick him into eating some. Eventually Steve is called away on Avengers business--James doesn’t think the instant switch from Steve to Cap will ever get less entertaining--and he’s left alone.

Well, nearly alone. Honey hops up on the couch and starts snoring. Leif sits across the room and stares at him with mild interest.

“I thought you were Sophie’s service dog,” he says, after a while. Leif sneezes and lies down. James escapes to his rooms. 

The small couch is just right for curling up on. It has a blanket the twin of the one Louisa gave him. The bookshelf has Michio Kaku, Kelly Bowen, and a full set of Harry Potter. He moves rapidly from feeling touched to falling just a little bit in love. 

He investigates the clothes. A few shirts, a couple pairs of jeans, and the attendant unmentionables. He eyes the jeans with distaste and wonders if the future has pants that don’t feel like the lovechild of burlap and flour sacks. 

He pulls out his laptop and immediately gets overwhelmed. He’s been using the internet for over a year and he still has no idea how people deal with the barrage of information. He also has no idea how to connect to Jarvis. Does Jarvis have a number? An email? 

“Jarvis?” he says.

“Good afternoon, James,” says Jarvis. The voice sounds weird coming out of his laptop speakers. “What can I help you with?”

“I think I need some clothes,” he says. “And there’s...a lot...”

The first website he looked at had jeans full of holes, and the second had teenagers in sweatshirts of pastels shades that threatened to give him a headache. He feels old.

“I would be happy to assist you with a wardrobe,” says the AI. “Any preferences? Cut? Color?”

“Not jeans,” says James. He might not know much, but he knows that. “Nothing bright. Stuff that doesn’t stand out? Just practical. And soft.”

He remembers that he used to care about clothes, but now he just cares that they don’t itch. 

“I can prepare a report for you to look over, or I can acquire a selection and have them delivered,” says Jarvis. 

James can’t think of much he’d rather do less than look at a report full of clothing. 

“Just delivered, please,” he says. 

“I will have it to you tomorrow,” Jarvis says. “Anything else I can help you with?”

“Not right now,” James answers. His brief foray into fashion used up whatever energy he had to think about the outside world. “Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure, sir,” says Jarvis, and disconnects. 

James closes his laptop and goes to stare at the tub. It remains absurd. He tries the tap and hot water pours forth. There’s a bottle of bubbles and he flicks it open. It smells like lavender. 

“Why the hell not,” he mutters, and runs himself a bubble bath. 

  
  


Steve comes home to find James wafting in a cloud of gentle floral scent and wielding a knife like the scallions have personally offended him. James looks up and glowers.

“You have. No food.”

“We don’t really cook,” Steve answers, perturbed. James realizes he’s pointing the knife at him and lowers it to a less accusatory position.

“I mean, Sophia does sometimes,” Steve continues,  “but I was never very--”

“Oh I remember,” says Bucky. “Still haven’t figured out how you managed to do that to hot dogs.”

“Hey they weren’t...” Steve begins, but trails off at James’s cocked eyebrow. They really were that bad. “What are you making? Where did all this come from anyway?”

The countertop is scattered with fresh produce, vibrant against the marble. 

“Delivery,” says James. Faced with a fridge full of half gone take out and some sad condiments, he had again called on Jarvis. “And it’s a fish tagine with almond couscous and batbout.”

“I have no idea what that means, but it smells good.” James glances up to see Steve eyeing the produce with a look he recognizes.

“Set the table, Stevie. You can paint my eggplants later.”

Steve snickers, because he’s twelve, but complies. 

By the time Sophie walks in, the table is set and James is putting down the batbout. She stops dead. 

“Holy shit. Did you _cook_?"  


“Um. Yes?” he says. 

She stares up at him, eyes alight.

“Never leave us.”

And James, to his horror, blushes. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James can't sleep. Neither can anyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A smol update as a belated Ye Olde Northern Hemisphere Winter Holiday Times present. I will try to update more regularly, but in the last three months I have  
> -decided to leave my job by June  
> -decided to move to a different part of the state by June  
> -decided to get married in October  
> so things will still be crazy busy until at least November 2019. So. This fic is not abandoned, will keep being updated, but probably will be slow. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr if you miss me between updates! elzebrook.tumblr.com

* * *

Dinner is...fine. By an objective standard it’s very nice. A very nice dinner between a married couple and their houseguest, between two old friends and one’s newish wife. He and Steve reminisce, Steve and Sophie tell him how they met, he and Sophie commiserate about Steve’s frequent forays into stupidity. James tries to ignore the yawning abyss of years and violence sitting between them.

Eventually they clean up and turn in, and James spends a few hours trying to read before he admits his ability to play normal is tapped out. He’s full of restless alertness, the kind that pushes him to check the windows and walk the neighborhood over and over until dawn. No matter that there are no locks for him to check, no blinds to pull. No matter he’s in the best fortified building in existence, a building that would itself rise up against intruders.

He prowls the apartment, hoping to convince his brain that it has completed a check of the perimeter. His brain remains stubbornly aware that there are floors upon floors of unexplored and unknown territory. It worries at him like a mongrel with a bone.

He taps his fingers on the kitchen countertop. If he keeps pacing, he’ll probably wake his hosts. Steve would try to help. Steve would try to use good natured understanding to cover up worried eyes. Steve would take him on a tour of the entire building when all James really wants is someone to tell him he’s being an idiot.

And Sophie...he doesn’t know. Another unknown, and doesn’t that niggle at him too, but he doesn’t want to burden her with his malfunctioning neurons. He sighs, and slips out the front door. At least in the hallway he won’t wake anyone up.

“Good evening, James,” says a voice above him, after his third circuit of the hallway. He pauses. Right. The robot. Robots are a thing now.

“Hi,” he says. “Sorry. I was trying not to wake anyone.”

“No apologies necessary,” says Jarvis. “May I assist you with anything? You seem...restless.”

James snorts. How very diplomatic.

If he were actually better, he’d ask for a gym, and run himself ragged until his brain shut up. But three times down the hallway and his lungs were already protesting. He should probably just go back to his room. Rooms. Two whole rooms, bigger than most places he’d ever lived, and they still pressed in around him.

“Is there somewhere I can go where I won’t be bugging anyone?”

“Of course,” says Jarvis. “If you would be so kind...”

The elevator doors slide open with a pleasant ding. The ride is short, and when the doors slide open again a few floors up, he’s faced with another hallway. At one end, light spills out from an open doorway and he heads towards it. He can hear a quiet murmur of voices, and he supposes in a building full of scientists and soldiers, he can’t be the only one with a fraught relationship with sleep. Maybe someone’s up and watching tv.

He reaches the pool of light and stops.

Well, he wasn’t wrong.

Tony sits at a dining table, surrounded by his near omnipresent glow of holograms. Thor is hunched on the floor in front of the television, locked in a quiet but furious game of Mario Kart with Natasha and dark haired girl James doesn’t know. Clint stands in the kitchen, swilling what James hopes is decaf, considering the hour. Sophie lounges on a couch, reading a book. Leif is on her lap, the both of them at a similar neck-crunching angel.

Tony looks up at James’s aborted movement.

“Hi,” he says. “Welcome to the Insomnia Club.”

Sophie turns her head, further compounding James’ worry for her vertebrae.

“Can’t sleep?”

He nods.

“Came up here because I was trying not to wake you.”

She sits up.

“I don’t really...sleep.”

He looks around the room.

“Does anyone?”

“Sleep is for people who aren’t revolutionizing technoneural links,” mutters Tony.

“You’re only reinventing neural whatsits because Jarvis shut off power to the lab,” says the girl on the floor. “And Jarvis only does that if you’ve been up for so long you can’t be trusted with the blowtorch. How long is it this time, J?”

“Mr. Stark has been awake for 41.6 hours.”

“Traitor,” says Tony, glaring up at the ceiling. He catches James’s frown and shrugs. “Pepper’s gone.”

“Steve sleeps,” says Sophie. “The bastard.”

“Bruce,” says Clint. “Half an hour and he’s out like a light.”

Tony turns towards him.

“You would be too, if you had as much weed as that man.”

Clint swirls his coffee.

“If I had as much weed as Bruce, I’d see nothing but spiders for three days.”

“Fair,” says Tony.

“I’m just waiting for Clint’s Ambien to kick in,” says Natasha. “And Thor’s got cosmic jet lag.”

“The rhythms of Asgard differ from those of Earth,” says Thor. “And I--Darcy if you blue shell me, I swear by Ymir’s balls--”

The floor girl cackles as one of the racers falls off the rainbow road, and Princess Peach skates to victory. She flops over backwards and looks up at James.

“Darcy Lewis,” she says. “Professional scientist wrangler and ass kicker at Mario Kart. I just make poor life choices.”

“James,” he answers. “Free-lance assassin and fugitive.”

“Ooo, tall, dark, handsome _and_ running from the law. Be still my heart."

James decides he likes this one. He winks at her.

“Don’t forget the sense of barely controlled danger and the tragic backstory.”

Darcy gives an exaggerated sigh. “If I weren’t a taken woman...”

“I regret letting the two of you in the same room already,” says Tony. “Barnes stop hovering in the doorway like a sad moth, you’re making me nervous."

James looks at Sophie. He’s not sure why, because it’s Tony’s room, it’s Tony’s whole building, and Jarvis led him here, and it’s not like anyone cares that he’s here, everyone else is already back to their separate conversations. But he looks to her, and she smiles.

“Come on. I’ll make you some tea.”

She makes him something that smells like mint and honey, and manifests cookies from somewhere, and does nothing to dispel James’s sense that she is a better person than he should be allowed around.

He sips his tea and watches from a corner.

Darcy and Thor shittalk and pester each other like siblings, Natasha using their distraction to take the lead. Clint meanders over to the couch to watch them, and Sophie throws her legs over his lap without looking up. Tony’s screens alternate between incomprehensible diagrams and security camera feeds in a loop that James finds strangely soothing.

“I can run this to your laptop, if it’s so interesting,” says Tony.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—“ he starts. Tony’s eyes flick over to him.

“Hard to obsessively patrol the perimeter with your lungs full of shit,” Tony says. He taps his chest. “I’d know. Jarvis can route this to you, so you can at least see what’s going on. If you want."

James pauses.

“That obvious?”

Tony waves a hand. “You’re in a room of insomniac soldiers, spies, and hostage situation survivors. Take a guess what any of us do when we can’t sleep.”

“And what he’s not saying, because he likes to have his illusion of omniscience, is that he has too many cameras and zero boundaries,” Natasha adds.

Tony shrugs, already re-consumed by his glowing screens. James thinks he should feel like his privacy has been violated, but instead it feels kind of nice someone noticed. Even if that someone was a robot and a mad scientist.

He leans in his corner with his tea until Thor bails and Darcy ropes him into playing Mario Kart. He’s never been able to say no to a pair of pretty blue eyes. He loses spectacularly, because he’s playing against an apparent expert and the scariest woman in the world.

“I hope you’re better at assassinating than you are at video games,” says Darcy, as Peach coasts to victory again.

“My usual toys have less buttons,” he answers. “I’m old and easily confused.”

“If you would ever play anything but this damn racing game--” says Natasha.

“Like I’m going to play anything involving shooting with any of you.”

“I like Mario Kart,” says James.

“Of course you do,” Natasha mutters.

They play another round. Clint makes commentary in rapid fire ASL from the couch, drawing the occasional repressed smirk from Natasha. It’s too fast for James to catch all of it, but he knows an insult when he sees it.

“And your hair looks like you cut it in the dark with hedge clippers, so I don’t know why you think you have any right to judge,” he says finally, turning his head so Clint can see him.

“He’s got you there,” says Natasha over Darcy’s laughter.

Clint’s eyes narrow. “You sign?”

James drops his controller.

<No, just fluent in bullshit> he signs back.

“How am I supposed to have secret conversations with Nat if everyone signs now?” Clint demands of Sophie.

“Woe is you,” she answers, and turns a page.

“Does everyone sign?” James asks.

“Most of us know at least a little,” says Darcy. “Between Birdbrain here, and the constant explosions, and the magical shenanigans, there’s someone who can’t hear or talk pretty much all the time. Learning sign was more efficient than trying to play charades every five minutes.”

“Makes sense,” James says.

“What about you?” Darcy asks.

“Zareen--my therapist--thought it would help. Sometimes talking is...hard.”

“Makes sense,” Darcy says, nodding. And then she kicks his ass at Mario Kart again.

After Natasha shepherds a glassy eyed Clint downstairs, Darcy shows James a game with a little village of animal people. It’s cute and soothing and he spends several hours wandering around and trying to catch fish after Darcy heads down to her apartment.

Eventually his restlessness fades and he lets himself surface from the little animal world. He stretches and looks around.

Tony hasn’t moved, still poking at some arcane schematic. Sophie has fallen asleep in the same spine cracking position, Leif curled up at her feet. James drapes a blanket over her. He gets the same approving look from both her cousin and her dog.

He slips back into his rooms. He won’t be able to sleep for a while yet, but the infernal twitchy buzzing has stopped, and that’s all he really wanted. Besides, there’s someone he should probably talk to.

He swathes himself in his blanket, focuses on his breathing, and waits.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James does Yet More Therapy, has dreams, and gets to know himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Oh I'll try to be better about updating."  
> ...FIVE MONTHS LATER...
> 
> Y'all, being an adult is a lot of stuff happening all at the same time. I make no promises about updates or times, but this fic is still Not Abandoned.
> 
> This chapter is entirely unbeta'd and barely even looked at. More notes about the chapter at the bottom.

 

* * *

He’s in a damp and ragged space, more cave than room. Fading light spills in from a rough cut doorway, silhouetting a figure. He walks towards it.

The figure cuts him a look, says nothing. James props himself on the wall opposite. It’s always like this these days, some cave or bunker. To his right a doorway, to his left a hallway stretching long and dark.

The first time he’d done this, it had been a prison cell. He supposes a cave with an open doorway is an improvement.

His companion lights a cigarette, takes a drag, and hands it over. James takes it. He doesn’t smoke anymore, really. It never tastes right. But here, in this space, it tastes exactly like he remembers it.

Well, it oughta. It’s his brain, after all.

James exhales, smoke curling in the light as he looks out the doorway.

“So,” he says. “We’re not dead.”

“Guess not,” says his ghost. His voice always sounds rusty with disuse, no matter how much he’s been talking. James hands the cigarette back to him. They stand and share it, looking out at nothing in particular, two soldiers in brief respite.

“What do you think?” James asks. “Should we stay?

* * *

 

Once the ghost dreams start, they don’t stop. Landscapes of bleak wars and the sounds of pain, the man in black always a step ahead, his gun at the ready.

When James describes them to Zareen, she only nods.

“Do you think it is working, then, to ask him?”

“I guess? I mean, he is communicating. I just have no idea _what_ he’s communicating.”

“When you’re in the dreams, how do you feel?”

“Annoyed.”

His whole brain is annoying. It’s a lot of other things too, but foremost it’s annoying.

“In the dreams? Or is that how you feel right now?”

James makes a face. She’s right, and that’s also annoying.

“I don’t feel...anything, really. In the dreams.”

Which was a little odd, now that he thinks about it. He has other dreams of battlefields, of missions, and they always leave him wrung out like a overused rag. But with the ghost dreams, he just wakes frustrated with his alter ego, himself, and his inability to understand.

Zareen cocks her head, birdlike.

“I’m curious. How do you see the dreams?”

“Well, when you’re asleep, your brain produces a chemical—“

Zareen’s eyes narrow and he grins at her.

“ _I_ _mean_ , do you see it through your eyes, or are you watching yourself?”

“I don’t know. I’m me, I guess,” he says.

“I want to try something,” she says. “Would you mind closing your eyes?”

He must look skeptical, because she says “Humor me.”

He closes his eyes.

“I want you to picture one of the dreams. Perhaps one where you are outside. Picture it as you remember, looking through your own eyes, feeling your own feet on the ground.”

The last dream he remembers as outside is a place he thinks is a half-remembered Vietnam. A constant buzz of aircrafts, the foliage stripped off the trees. It smells like burned flesh. The ground crunches underfoot. Ahead of him, his ghost walks.

“Are you there? You can just nod.”

He nods.

“Good,” says Zareen. Her voice is calm, unobtrusive. “I want you to try and shift your mind outside yourself, as if you are a bird taking off.”

It’s not hard, to pull his mind up and out. He has spent enough of his life watching from some high place, waiting for the right moment. The scene becomes small, and he and his ghost became small with it. He watches them walk, quick and quiet through the trees.

“What do you see?” asks Zareen.

From up here, it’s so obvious he can’t believe he hasn’t seen it before. He opens his eyes.

“Oh.”

“Oh?” his therapist echoes.

“He’s...protecting me?”

“Is he?” Zareen asks.

“Yeah,” he says, staring into nothing. He’s done enough protection details and escort missions to know. A step and a half ahead, eyes always looking, a gun always ready. He focuses on Zareen.

“And you already knew, didn’t you?”

Zareen shrugs, but he sees spark of satisfaction deep in her eyes.

“Telling you what I think is not nearly as useful as you seeing something for yourself. But as an expert in psychological trauma, I know that alternate personalities arise as the mind’s defense against traumatic experiences. And remind me what you told me about when your ghost makes an appearance?”

Whenever he gets freaked out about something, that’s when. James thunks his head gently on the wall behind him.

“I used to be smart, once,” he says.

“Sometimes, we are too close to things to see them clearly,” Zareen answers. She leans toward him in the way she has when she wants to make sure he gets the point. “You created him to protect you. And he is still protecting you, in the way he knows how. We just need to work on understanding the difference between a perceived danger and real danger.”

James glares at the ceiling. A cobweb wafts gently in the breeze from the air conditioner.

“Ok. How?”

Zareen shrugs again.

“Talking to him seems to work. Try that.”

So James talks to him, when he rears his head.

_I know you don’t like how crowded the farmer’s market is, I just want to grab some plums and then we’ll get out of here._

_I’m pretty sure that guy is reaching for his phone and not a gun, this isn’t the neighborhood for subway shootings, that’s father north._

_The helicopter is for the news, we are not under attack, but if it makes you feel better we’ll just hide in this alley until it goes away, sure._

It’s slow going. He still has bad days, but the ghost is a little more willing to listen to him if he recognizes its fears instead of shoving them down. It’s a little like having a really cranky toddler, if temper tantrums had the possibility of ending in mass murder. But it works. James knows how to handle kids, and he knows how to handle nervous soldiers. The real problem is, he’s running out of time.

He’s stretched out the drugs as much as he could, but his supply of the mysterious blue liquid is dwindling. If he wants--and oh, does he want--to take down whatever HYDRA operations he could in a blaze of C4 fueled glory, he needs to get his shit together rather faster than he is doing.

“So remember when you told me you could sort things out that need sorting?” he asks Zareen.

“Yes?” she answers.

“I think I need to be sorted.”

She examines him for a moment.

“Setting aside the literal dozens of Harry Potter jokes I could be making--you’re a Hufflepuff, by the way--may I ask what led to this conclusion? You’re making remarkable progress without this kind of help.”

“I’m on, um. Something of a timeline. There’s things I need to do. Elsewhere.”

It’s the vaguest answer he’s ever given her, but he’s pretty sure telling a medical professional he intends to travel the world on a killing spree and then die somewhere when his drugs run out is not the best idea. He really doesn’t want to have to break out of an institution.

“How mysterious,” she says, dryly. “Would I be right in thinking you will do these things within this timeline whether or not I agree to help?”

He nods.

“Hm. If I were to agree, what are you hoping to get out of it? This isn’t magical cure-all. I want you to understand that. You will be living with the affects of what you have experienced for the rest of your life.”

“I know,” he answers. “But if HYDRA left something in my head, I need to know about it. I can handle the ghost, but I need to know I won’t get blindsided by something else when I’m...doing the things. And I...I trust you.”

This seems to be the right answer. Zareen’s posture relaxes a little.

“Very well. But you need to know--it’s not easy. The process of recovery never is, but this is...accelerated. It’s probably going to be painful, and it’s definitely going to be exhausting, and it will be very, very hard.”

“Someone once told me that things worth doing often are,” he says. Her mouth quirks up at the corner.

“Touché.”

She joins him on the couch, sitting cross legged to face him. He turns towards her. She holds out a hand.

“Shall we?”

He blinks.

“What, now?”

“No time like the present,” she says. Cheerful Zareen is back. “Today will just be about establishing a few things, setting up a base to work from, and so forth. But it’s easier to do than to try to explain.”

“Alright,” he says. “What do I--do I need to do anything, or...”

“Just think of somewhere safe,” she says. “Somewhere you’re comfortable. And when you have that fixed in your mind, take my hand.”

“Alright,” he says again. Somewhere safe.

He takes her hand.

* * *

 

He’s sitting at a table. Zareen is next to him, in one of the mismatched chairs. There’s only three, and one of them appears to be some kind of franken-chair cannibalized from parts of others.

“Oh, this is cozy,” she says, looking around. “Good choice.”

James looks around too. It’s a tenement apartment, small and more than a little battered. Or rather, it’s several apartments, run together in his mind.

He feels like he’s taking a trip through the first twenty-five years of his life all in one three room flat. There’s the window from the place his family lived until he was twelve, here’s the table with the burn scar from Becky’s ill advised experiment with a curling iron, there’s the sofa he and Steve found on the street and dragged into their first place together. The place even smells right, scent of dumplings from the Russian emigree downstairs from when he was eight mixing with a hint of turpentine from Steve’s first experiments with oils when they were nineteen.

It’s home.

“Huh,” he says.

“How are you feeling?” asks Zareen. She looks the same as she does in the real world, and seeing her in skinny jeans and wedge heels is a little jarring against the backdrop of his childhood.

“Fine, I think,” he says. He guesses he also looks the same, except--

“Huh,” he says again. He pokes his left hand experimentally with his right. It looks--and feels--like flesh and bone.

Zareen props her chin on a hand and regards it with him.

“Brains are weird.”

He snorts. Zareen is _very_ good at understatements.

“So this is a good place, for you?” she asks.

He looks around again. There’s the cross stitch sampler Sarah Rogers made that Steve took with him every time he moved, here’s that mug with a blue flower and the chip in it from when Becky dropped it.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, this’ll do.”

“Good. When we’re doing the kind of work we’re about to, it’s a good idea to have a fixed spot to return to, in case you get...overwhelmed. If you want to stop, or just need a break, think of this room and you’ll be here.”

He nods, slowly, turning the chipped mug around and around in his hands.

“So how do we find the...whatever. HYDRA nonsense. Bad stuff.”

Zareen looks around.

“It’s your brain. Where do you think it’d be?”

James thinks for a minute. He gently sets the mug down and gets up. The door of the apartment opens into a hallway that’s a similar blend of scenes from his younger life, but if the HYDRA poison is anywhere in his brain, he thinks he knows where he would have stuck it for storage.

Zareen follows him down the hallway, down the stairs, down down down.

He’d fucking hated this basement as a kid. Not for any real reason, besides that it was dark and dank and full of abandoned garbage and the remains of small, unfortunate animals.

There’s a cabinet at the far end, built into the wall. He stops in front of it. Zareen stands a little behind him.

“Probably there,” he says, as if he hadn’t just spent ten minutes spelunking in his memories. He hooks the tip of his boot under the bottom of the cabinet door and swings it open.

“Well,” says Zareen, peering over his shoulder. “That’s certainly a cupboard full of nightmares.”

“Yep,” he says, glaring into it. Whatever HYDRA brain bullshit darkness is in there writhes back at him.

“We could...start this now,” Zareen says. “If you want. Usually it takes people longer to get their bearings.”

He looks at her, sees the way she’s looking at his face, realizes he’s probably got the kind of determined, stubborn asshole expression that he’s seen on Steve more times than he can count. He unclenches his jaw.

“No time like the present,” he says.

Zareen gives him an encouraging smile. They walk through.

* * *

 

She's right. It’s exhausting, it’s hard, and it _hurts_.

It takes them weeks of real time to actually get anywhere, to get past the defenses his captors put in place. He leads, Zareen half a step behind him. The landscapes shift and crack and swirl with the non-linear, illogical logic of dreams. None of it is real, all of it is too real.

He is grateful, as they go on, for the cobbled together home he created. As they go deeper, he stumbles over memories from the war, from Azzano, from after the fall when HYDRA was still taking him apart and stitching him back together. It’s comforting, to sit in his remembered kitchen with his remembered chipped mug full of imaginary tea. To talk it through with Zareen in a place that is more familiar than anything in the real world.

Some of the memories send him not just back to his Happy Place Kitchen, but hurtling all the way back into reality, gasping and shaking and unable to speak. After this happens a few times, Zareen starts bugging him to learn sign language. He’s resistant, at first, because why can’t he just fucking talk like a normal person, he should be able to just _talk,_ why can’t he just _talk_ , but Zareen gives him a metaphorical smack upside the head.

“I need you to be able communicate with me during this, it’s a valuable skill, learning something new will give you something else to focus on and a tangible sense of accomplishment, and since I am inside your mind, _I need you to be able to communicate with me_.”

She’s right. As usual. And learning sign gives him something to do other than sleep, which is all he seems to be doing lately. Digging around in his brain is _exhausting_.

Not all the things they run into in his shattered psyche are real. Whatever programming HYDRA put in him twists his memories once he starts digging for it, turning them inside out and backwards in sickening ways. He sees things, sees himself doing things, having things done to him, that he knows didn’t happen, but they send him limping back to his imaginary kitchen all the same.

“That one was just...gross,” he says, once. “None of that happened, I know none of it happened, but it’s still just. Ugh.”

“What gets me,” Zareen answers, “is how unimaginative it all is.”

She looks annoyed. James stares at her.

“What?” she says. “It’s all abandoned hallways and writhing darkness and beasts in the labyrinth and ooooo the monster’s been you the whole tiiiime. It’s not even _clever_. It’s just bad cliches.”

James stares at her more.

“I watch a lot of horror movies,” she says, defensively. “And it’s harder to keep my less professional thoughts to myself when I’m literally inside your head.”

“No,” he says, with dawning realization. “No, you’re right. They put stuff in my head and they _didn’t even do a good job at it_.”

It takes him a moment to identify what he’s feeling, because it’s not quite anger. He’s indignant. He’s _offended_. 

“Those _bastards._ ”

 

The next time the HYDRA bullshit tries to shove him sideways into yet another scene featuring 101 Ways to Dismember Your Own Family, he throws up his arms.

“This isn’t real and it isn’t even my nightmare!”

Behind him, Zareen bursts into startled laughter.

“Do you hear me?” he yells into the void of his own brain. “This is _badly written!_ ”

It doesn’t make the horror twisted backwards memories stop, but it helps him push past them. He gets better at ignoring what is obviously false, and stepping past the memories that aren’t relevant.

So it takes them a while, fighting shadows and ignoring monsters, but one day they turn a corner and suddenly they’re not alone.

“You shouldn’t be here,” says the soldier.

James stares. It’s him, but it’s not him, the hair too long, the body held wrong, the metal arm glinting in the shitty flickering fluorescent lights. A mask covers his mouth, and James feels a phantom pressure on his own face when he sees it.

“It’s my head,” James says.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the soldier says again. His eyes dart to the sides, to the ceiling. If he weren’t wearing James’s face, James would have missed the faint worried tightness in it.

“Why not?” asks Zareen. The soldier focuses on her, but his eyes slide to James again.

“It’s not safe.”

“Ok,” says James. His hands are in his pockets, and he’s trying to project non-threatening as hard as he possibly can. He looks himself in the eye.

“Take us someplace safe.”

* * *

 

It’s a prison cell. He shouldn’t be surprised. He spent his first weeks of freedom locked in an underground bunker by his own choice, but. Still. It’s a prison cell.

He sneaks a glance at Zareen. She looks like this is extremely normal, which he supposes it might be, for her.

“So, this is...safe?” he asks, mostly for lack of anything better to say. The soldier gives him a look.

“Shouldn’t be here,” he repeats. The mask is gone, as is the gun, but the worry remains. “It’s dangerous.”

“What is?” asks Zareen.

“There’s. Things,” says the soldier. “They left. Things. They shouldn’t get out. It’s...bad.”

“HYDRA things?” James says. The soldier’s lip curls at the name, and he nods.

“We know,” James says. “We’re here to get rid of them.”

His alter ego says nothing, but doubt scribbles over the worry.

“We can,” he insists. “Well, Zareen can. We just need to get to them.”

The soldier scans Zareen. She meets his gaze, serene as ever, letting him look.

“You’ve been...helping.”

Every word he says sounds like it’s coming from a long way away, dredged up with great effort.

“Yes,” says Zareen. “And I would like to keep helping.”

The soldier’s eyes dart back and forth between them.

“Why.”

The implications of the question stagger James. Not how did you get here. Not how can you fix it. Not even why are you here, but why are you _helping_. James doesn’t understand a lot of things, these days, from his own biochemistry on down to memes, but he’s never once questioned why someone would _help_.

“Because you deserve peace,” Zareen answers. “In here, of all places, you deserve some peace.”

The soldier looks between them for a moment longer, and then seems to make up his mind. He turns on his heel and walks out.

“This way.”

 

They follow him deep into the winding bowels of James’s mind. The light glints off his arm as he holds his gun at the ready. James keeps his eyes fixed on the figure ahead of him as the walls crack and writhe around them. He knows, suddenly, where they’re going. He can taste the metal in his mouth.

The soldier stops in front of a door. James, his steps slow with dread, reaches out for the handle. The door pulses, somehow, radiating sick black agony.

“Wait,” says Zareen behind him. He turns. He had forgotten she was there, forgotten he wasn’t alone.

“Wait,” she says, again. She reaches out a hand and he takes it, so grateful for the simple human contact he almost starts to shake. The corridor seems a little brighter.

“I don’t think we want you opening that door,” she says. “Considering it’s, you know, programming.”

He swallows.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, probably not.”

“You got us here,” she continues, looking from him to the soldier. “Both of you.”

She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. He looks down and realizes that the hallway is actually literally a little brighter, because Zareen’s hand is glowing. He looks up at her and she smiles. The glow brightens, a golden halo all around her now.

“You’ve done your part,” she says. “Now let me do mine.”

She lets go of his hand and turns to the door.

“You might want to brace yourself,” she says over her shoulder. “This will probably hurt.”

She’s so bright now she’s hard to look at, a fierce gold against the pulsing darkness. She reaches up and sets her palms against the door.

Somewhere far away, James hears himself scream.

* * *

 

James wakes up to the smell of black tea and lemon. There’s a cup in front of him on Louisa’s coffee table, and a plate with a few cookies. He’s got the fluffy blanket over his lap. He blinks a few times, and looks over to see Louisa talking quietly with Zareen. His landlady catches his eye.

“You scared the pants off me,” she says. “It’s a good thing I have the whole building, this is a nice enough neighborhood that someone might actually call the cops.”

“Sorry,” he says. He sounds like he’s been yelling in a smoke filled room for three hours.

“Drink your tea,” she answers.

Zareen waits until he’s had sip or two before asking “How are you feeling?”

Throat aside, he actually feels...fine.

“I’m good,” he says, around half a cookie. “You?”

“I need about a four hour nap, I think,” she says, and she does look tired. “There was a lot of nasty junk they left in you, but it should be gone.”

He stops chewing out of shock.

“All of it?”

"I’d like to do a few checks in the next week or so, just to make extra sure. But yeah. You should be clear.”

He shuts his eyes and breathes out for what feels like the first time in a long, long time. Tears prickle at his eyelids.

“Thank you,” he says. “Zareen, I can’t even...I could never thank you enough.”

He opens his eyes to see her smiling. Late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window frames her in an echo of the golden glow.

“You deserve a little peace too, James,” she says.

 

Louisa orders pizza after Zareen leaves. They watch a show of amateur bakers trying to make actual food, and James laughs until he cries. When he sleeps, he dreams of a prison cell, but he’s not alone and the door is open and no hallway beckons him down.

Zareen does her checks, later, and pronounces him free of HYDRA bullshit. It doesn’t mean he’s free of trauma bullshit, but trauma bullshit at least makes him want to run and hide instead of becoming an unstoppable killing machine. It also doesn’t mean he’s free of his ghost, but the soldier mostly lies quiet. Maybe if there’s nothing inside to protect James from, the outside seems a little less threatening.

And then Louisa comes to him one day with a list of coordinates and small bundle of burner identities.

“There’s more,” she says. “A lot more. And I’m still decrypting. But these are the ones that need to be done quiet, lest we start a war. I recommend you start at the top, I have...friends in the area, and I can call in a few favors.”

He blinks at her. He knows he said he had a few months, and now it’s been a few months and some change, but somehow it feels sudden. She sits down next to him.

“James. You don’t have to do this, you know. If you don’t want. We can give it all to other people. Zareen was right. You deserve a little peace.”

He thinks about it for maybe a millisecond. But the feeling of having a purpose sizzles in his blood and sinks into his bones, as addictive as whatever drugs he’s rapidly running out of. He takes the list and pats her hand.

“You’re right,” he says. “I don’t have to. But I don’t want to walk away from this, Louisa. I want to stop it.”

She shakes her head, fond.

“I figured. Give me a few days to sort out supplies and make some calls.”

 

That night he dreams again, but this time it’s on purpose. It’s not the jail cell, this time, it’s some concrete and cinder block space. His ghost looks surprised, inasmuch as he has an expression.

“Hey,” says James. He gets a stare in return.

“I don’t know how much you’re aware of what happens out...out there.”

“Enough," rasps the soldier. 

“You know what we’re doing? Louisa and me, I mean? Taking on HYDRA?”

This time he gets a slow nod in answer.

"And you’re...you’re trying to protect me, right? That’s why all...” He waves a hand around the bunker, the doorways, the horrible housing for his horrible memories he can’t even remember.

“All this,” he says. The soldier’s eyebrow raises by a fraction of an inch. James feels like if his ghost had more self-expression there would be sarcasm.

“Whatever HYDRA put in our brain is gone," he persists. "I mean, there's still a lot of bad memories, but there's no programming, no orders, nothing trying to get out. But there's going to be a lot of traveling, and a lot of fighting. There's probably gonna be times when you're gonna want to take over, but I don’t want anyone getting hurt who doesn’t need to be hurt, so--"

“You want me to trust you?” says the soldier, and oh, there’s the sarcasm. But after twenty years with Steve Rogers, James knows the best way to disarm that is with sincerity.

“No,” he answers. “I’m trying to say I trust _you_.”

 

He leaves three days later, with nothing but a backpack and a passport and about a dozen other identities squirrelled expertly around his person. His mission rests side by side with his ghost, all of them in a rough tandem that gets smoother with each firefight, every explosion, each dead HYDRA agent left in their wake.

He leaves New York, and he leaves coming back too late, putting it off until his veins catch fire and his heart stutters and his hands shake too much to hold a gun. But all his mistakes lead him, finally, here.

Here, New York. Here, with Steve. Here, in this imagined halfway space between sunlight and nightmares, side by side with himself.

The question he just asked echoes in his head. The cigarette smoke wreathes itself around them, dancing on the air currents disturbed by their breathing.

His ghost takes another drag on the cigarette, flicking the ash off the end.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we can stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Couple things: I don't have Dissociative Identity Disorder, so if I got something very badly wrong, lemme know. Taking into account that this is all handwavey comic book nonsense, of course. But I figure if anything can cause someone to develop DID as an adult, it would be something like what all happened our boy. 
> 
> Also I have decided that my beloved Zareen who I made up of whole cloth is stupid powerful, even if her powers are rather narrow. Like, maybe not quite Omega level mutant, but close. 
> 
> Anyway. Rate and review and if you want to holler with me about Endgame, I'm on tumblr at elzebrook.tumblr.com


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